The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and Modern Times eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 445 pages of information about The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and Modern Times.

The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and Modern Times eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 445 pages of information about The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and Modern Times.

This is night in Venus and Adonis

  Look! the world’s comforter with weary gait
  His day’s hot task hath ended in the West;
  The owl, night’s herald, shrieks ’tis very late;
  The sheep are gone to fold, birds to their nest
  And coal-black clouds, that shadow heaven’s light,
  Do summon us to part and bid good-night.

And this morning, in Romeo and Juliet

  The grey-ey’d morn smiles on the frowning night,
  Checkering the Eastern clouds with streaks of light. 
  And flecked darkness like a drunkard reels
  From forth day’s path and Titan’s fiery wheels;
  Now, ere the sun advance his burning eye,
  The day to cheer, and night’s dank dew to dry ...

Such wealth and brilliance of personification was not found again until Goethe, Byron, and Shelley.

He is unusually rich in descriptive phrases: 

The weary sun hath made a golden set,
And by the bright track of his golden car
Gives token of a goodly day to-morrow.

The worshipp’d Sun
Peered forth the golden window of the East.

The all-cheering sun
Should in the farthest East begin to draw
The shady curtains from Aurora’s bed.

The moon: 

Like to a silver bow
New bent in heaven.

Titania says: 

I will wind thee in my arms.... 
So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle
Gently entwist; the female ivy so
Enrings the barky fingers of the elm. 
O how I love thee!

That same dew, which sometime on the buds
Was wont to swell, like round and orient pearls,
Stood now within the pretty flow’rets’ eyes
Like tears.

                                        (Midsummer Night’s Dream.)

                           Daffodils

That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty.

          
                                                  (Winter’s Tale.)

                       Pale primroses

That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength.

          
                                                  (Winter’s Tale.)

Goethe calls winds and waves lovers.  In Troilus and Cressida we have: 

  The sea being smooth,
  How many shallow bauble boats dare sail
  Upon her patient breast, making their way
  With those of nobler bulk! 
  But let the ruffian Boreas once enrage
  The gentle Thetis, and anon behold
  The strong-ribb’d bark through liquid mountains cut,
  Bounding between two moist elements
  Like Perseus’ horse.

And further on in the same scene: 

What raging of the sea! shaking of earth!  Commotion in the winds! ... the bounded waters Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores.

The personification of the river in Henry IV. is half mythical: 

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The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and Modern Times from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.