Bishop Jebb has pointed out for the enjoyment of the “classical and pious reader” the similarity between the moral reflections in this poem and those in Cardinal Bona’s “Divina Psalmodia.”[227] Parnell’s close adherence to the thought of the cardinal in the didactic part of the poem, and the fact that the last forty-two lines, the ones that deal with Nature, are entirely Parnell’s own, give striking proof of the originality of his thought concerning the external world and its power over the human heart. It is in these lines that we find his most subtly suggestive conception of Nature. He represents himself as sad at heart. He seeks contentment in earthly pomp, in the paths of knowledge, in solitary search after diverting scenes in Nature, but in vain. At last he goes to a wood, and as he yields himself to the influence of the place becomes suddenly aware that in this quiet spot the true spirit of contentment is speaking to him wise lessons of self-control and communion with God. In gratitude for the joy that has come to him through Nature he utters a song of praise to the “source of all Nature,” but as he looks about him on the glad world, he feels that his song is merely an expression in words of the great chorus of thanksgiving going always silently up from sun and moon and stars, from seas, woods, and streams. Such work as this is indeed remarkable before 1713; and for spirituality and insight, for what has well been called “a sense of the thing behind the thing,” it was many years before it was paralleled. “The Morning Contemplation” is the only one of Pattison’s poems that has much to do with Nature. It was written, his friend tells us, on the banks of a river where the young poet used to wander, endeavoring to attune his verses to the smoothness and harmony of the stream. He was especially sensitive to the “sadly pleasing melancholy” of moonlight nights and solitary walks, and he was one of the first poets to express a longing for solitude with Nature. Gilded rooms of state, the purple slavery of towns, rob him of the bliss he finds in the living forest. When alone in the spacious fields he thinks himself almost a god. Even little scrubby thorns are to him more pleasing objects than courts can show. Nature charms his senses and soothes his soul; she is his best teacher, and he trusts her plain instructions. Tell me, all ye mighty wise, Ye governors of colleges; What deeper wisdom can you know Than easy nature’s works here show, reads like a crude prevision of Wordsworth’s “The Tables Turned.” The “excellent morality” of “The Morning Contemplation” is much in the vein of Dyer’s “Grongar Hill.” Every fact in Nature arouses some thought or some emotion. By contrast or analogy it suggests human life, as in the lines, See this river as it goes, With what eloquence it flows; * * * * * Believe me, life’s the very same, The very image of this stream.