"Moon of harvest, herald mild Of plenty, rustic labour's child, Hail! O hail! I greet thy beam, As soft it trembles o'er the stream, And gilds the straw-thatched hamlet wide, Where Innocence and Peace reside; 'Tis thou that gladd'st with joy the rustic throng, Promptest the tripping dance, th' exhilarating song." To emphasise this aspect is not to forget that there is another. Wordsworth experienced both types of emotion. Time, he sings: "that frowns In her destructive flight on earthly crowns, Spares thy cold splendour; still those far-shot beams Tremble on dancing waves and rippling streams With stainless touch, as chaste as when thy praise Was sung by Virgin-choirs in festal lays." But abundant evidence is available to prove that the position taken by Goethe and Schopenhauer may easily lead to a loss of true perspective. The moon and stars, though remote, are also near: though they start trains of passive and contemplative thought, they also stimulate active emotions and even passionate yearnings. What more passionate than Shelley? "The desire of the moth for the star, Of the night for the morrow, The devotion to something afar From the sphere of our sorrow." There do not seem to be many poets who have brought into clear antithesis and relief this dual aspect of the mystic influence of the heavenly bodies. But it definitely arrested the imagination and thought of Clough, whose poem, "Selene," deals wholly with this theme. It is too long for quotation here, though the whole of it would be admirably in place. Enough is given to show its general drift. The Earth addresses the Moon: "My beloved, is it nothing Though we meet not, neither can, That I see thee, and thou me, That we see and see we see, When I see I also feel thee; Is it nothing, my beloved? . . . O cruel, cruel lot, still thou rollest, stayest not, Lookest onward, look'st before, Yet I follow evermore. Cruel, cruel, didst thou only Feel as I feel evermore, A force, though in, not of me, Drawing inward, in, in, in, Yea, thou shalt though, ere all endeth, Thou shalt feel me closer, closer, My beloved! . . . The inevitable motion Bears us both upon its line Together, you as me, Together and asunder, Evermore. It so must be." It behoves the nature-mystic, then, to be wholehearted in defence of his master principle. _Homo sum, et humani a me nil alienum puto_--so said Terence. The nature-mystic adopts and expands his dictum. He substitutes _mundani_ for _humani_, and includes in his _mundus_, as did the Latins, and as did the Greeks in their _cosmos_, not only the things of earth but the expanse of heaven. CHAPTER XXXII EARTH, MOUNTAINS, AND PLAINS