It was love of nature that lent Wordsworth his power to divine nature’s secret.  When the poet approached Chamouni and the mountains that gird it round he tells us he was conscious of a shivering from head to foot, with mingled awe and fear; his mind glowed with an indescribable pleasure; his body thrilled as if in the presence of a disembodied spirit; his heart approached nature with an intensity of joy comparable only to that joy which Dante felt when approaching Beatrice.  But when the cares of this world gained upon him and the love of nature faded gradually away in the manner described by him in his “Intimations of Immortality,” then also his power to describe nature faded away.  For only when the heart loves can intellect do great work.

His biographer tells us that when Angelo grew old and blind he was accustomed to ask his servant to lead him to the torso of Phidias.  Passing his hands slowly over the broken marble, the sculptor entered into the thought of the great Grecian, and with love for his art glowing in his face and thrilling in his voice, he mused aloud upon the genius of Phidias.  Love of his art made all his days bright and all his moons honeymoons.  When Wyatt Eaton, the artist, was in Millet’s home he noticed that when the wife called the artist from his task to his noonday meal, the artist’s whole being had so gathered itself into the eye that there was no life left with which to hear.  Love lent genius skill.  No other sentiment is so universal or so powerful in its influence as love that energizes the mind and heart.  Love lent swiftness to the feet of Sir Galahad; lent his heart courage; lent his sword victory.  Entering the palace, love, said Cicero, “makes gold shine.”  Love for the birds lent fame to Audubon; just as love for the bees lent fortune to Huber.  Love of knowledge hived all the wisdom in the libraries; love of beauty adorned all the galleries; love of service organized all the philanthropies.  To-morrow, at the behest of love, and in the interests of dear ones at home, all the wheels will begin to revolve; all the trains go out and all the ships come in.  When a man of real force and worth passes upward into that high state of purity and sweet reasonableness called love, he becomes almost sacred and exhales an ineffable and mysterious atmosphere.  Great is the power of trade; wonderful the influence of fortune and force; marvelous the hundred instrumentalities and institutions of society, but above all of them is man, whose love can indeed “make riches splendid,” whose wisdom love can make mellow, whose strength love can make gentle, whose defeats love can turn into victories.  In that hour one hundred men dwell in one man.

Love also perfects morality and fulfills all ethical laws.  What health is to the body, what sweetness is to the lark’s song, what perfume is to the rose, that morality is to culture and character.  Drunkenness and gluttony have not more power to blear the eye than immorality to degrade the soul.  When Homer tells us that Ulysses escaped unharmed from the enchanted palace, but suffered injury from his unfaithfulness to a friend, the poet wishes us to know that it is easier to recover from the poison of Circe’s cup than to escape the effect of disobedience to the laws of God.