Here had I favorite stations, where I stood And heard the murmurs of the ocean flood, With not a sound beside, except when flew Aloft the lapwing, or the gray curlew. * * * * * Pleasant it was to view the sea-gulls strive Against the storm, or in the ocean dive With eager scream, or when they dropping gave Their closing wings to sail upon the wave. * * * * * Nor pleased it less around me to behold Far up the beach the yesty sea-foam rolled; Or from the shore upborne, to see on high Its frothy flakes in wild confusion fly: While the salt spray that clashing billows form Gave to the taste a feeling of the storm.[466] He recalls how he explored every creek and bay, how he took long walks over the hilly heath and mossy moors. Most of the scenery in “The Borough” as well as that in “The Village” is a memory picture of the country he knew so well in boyhood. It seems strange that this genuine love and accurate knowledge of Nature should not have found fuller expression in his early poetry. The explanation is perhaps twofold. His interest was primarily in man. He said that the finest scenes in Nature were less attractive to him than faces on a crowded street. He meant to be the portrait painter of poor people as he had seen them in a seaside village. His bitter pictures of country vice and ignorance and folly had in them no touch of patronage or contempt. He simply gave a hard, truthful representation of sordid life, and Nature had no meaning for him except as it was brought into connection with that life. When in after years his own lot was a happier one, and when a wider experience had brought him into contact with thrifty country folk, the bitterness of his early thought of man was greatly modified. With new views of man came an openness of mind to the gentler aspects of Nature. The real love of his boyhood, no longer crushed down by an over-mastering sense of human misery, was allowed free play. Furthermore, his later work was doubtless influenced by the new spirit of poetry about him. His son says that while at first but a cool admirer of the Lake poets, he came soon to love them and took no books oftener in his hands. All of Crabbe’s work in which there is much use of Nature comes more than ten years after the “Lyrical Ballads,” hence his growingly full use of Nature might easily be due in part to the influence of the new school of poetry. His free life, the different class of peasants he saw, the new poetry he was reading, would all have their effect in turning his attention to Nature. But the Nature he chose to write about was that which he had known and loved as a boy.