And _like a downward smoke_ the slender stream Along the cliff _to fall and pause and fall_ did seem. Or here again:— We left the dying ebb that _faintly lipp’d The flat red granite._ Or here of a wave:— Like a wave in the wild North Sea _Green glimmering toward the summit_ bears with all _Its stormy crests that smoke_ against the skies Down on a bark. —_Elaine._ That beech will _gather brown_, This _maple burn itself away_. —_In Memoriam._ The _wide-wing’d sunset_ of the misty marsh. —_Last Tournament._ But illustrations would be endless. Nothing seems to escape him in Nature. Take the following:— Like _a purple beech among the greens Looks out of place_. —_Edwin Morris_. Or Delays _as the tender ash delays To clothe herself, when all the woods are green_. —_The Princess_. As _black as ash-buds in the front of March_. —_The Gardener’s Daughter_. A gusty April morn That _puff’d_ the swaying _branches into smoke_. —_Holy Grail_. So with flowers, trees, birds and insects:— The fox-glove _clusters dappled bells_. —_The Two Voices_. The sunflower:— _Rays round with flame its disk of seed_. —_In Memoriam_. The dog-rose:— _Tufts of rosy-tinted snow_. —_Two Voices_. A _million emeralds_ break from the _ruby-budded lime_. —_Maud_. In gloss and hue the chestnut, _when the shell Divides threefold to show the fruit within_. —_The Brook_. Or of a chrysalis:— And flash’d as those _Dull-coated_ things, _that making slide apart Their dusk wing cases, all beneath there burns A Jewell’d harness_, ere they pass and fly. —_Gareth and Lynette_. So again:— Wan-sallow, as _the plant that feeds itself, Root-bitten by white lichen_. —_Id_. And again:— All the _silvery gossamers_ That _twinkle into green and gold_. —_In Memoriam_. His epithets are in themselves a study: “the _dewy-tassell’d_ wood,” “the _tender-pencill’d_ shadow,” “_crimson-circl’d_ star,” the “_hoary_ clematis,” “_creamy_ spray,” “_dry-tongued_ laurels”. But whatever he describes is described with the same felicitous vividness. How magical is this in the verses to Edward Lear:— Naiads oar’d A _glimmering shoulder_ under _gloom_ Of _cavern pillars_. Or this:— She lock’d her lips: she left me where I stood: “Glory to God,” she sang, and past afar, Thridding the sombre boskage of the wood, Toward the morning-star. —_A Dream of Fair Women_. But if in the world of Nature nothing escaped his sensitive and sympathetic observation,—and indeed it might be said of him as truly as of Shelley’s _Alastor_ Every sight And sound from the vast earth and ambient air Sent to his heart its choicest impulses,