Tennyson is said to have very poor eyes, but there seems to be no defect in the vision with which he sees nature, while he often hits the nail on the head in a way that would indicate the surest sight. True, he makes the swallow hunt the bee, which, for aught I know, the swallow may do in England. Our purple martin has been accused of catching the honey-bee, but I doubt his guilt. But those of our swallows that correspond to the British species, the barn swallow, the cliff swallow, and the bank swallow, subsist upon very small insects. But what a clear-cut picture is that in the same poem ("The Poet's Song"):-- "The wild hawk stood, with the down on his beak, And stared, with his foot on the prey." It takes a sure eye, too, to see "The landscape winking thro' the heat"-- or to gather this image:-- "He has a solid base of temperament; But as the water-lily starts and slides Upon the level in little puffs of wind, Though anchor'd to the bottom, such is he;" or this:-- "Arms on which the standing muscle sloped, As slopes a wild brook o'er a little stone, Running too vehemently to break upon it,"-- and many other gems that abound in his poems. He does not cut and cover in a single line, so far as I have observed. Great caution and exact knowledge underlie his most rapid and daring flights. A lady told me that she was once walking with him in the fields, when they came to a spring that bubbled up through shifting sands in a very pretty manner, and Tennyson, in order to see exactly how the spring behaved, got down on his hands and knees and peered a long time into the water. The incident is worth repeating as showing how intently a great poet studies nature. Walt Whitman says he has been trying for years to find a word that would express or suggest that evening call of the robin. How absorbingly this poet must have studied the moonlight to hit upon this descriptive phrase:-- "The vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue;" how long have looked upon the carpenter at his bench to have made this poem:-- "The tongue of his fore-plane whistles its wild ascending lisp;" or how lovingly listened to the nocturne of the mockingbird to have turned it into words in "A Word out of the Sea "! Indeed, no poet has studied American nature more closely than Whitman has, or is more cautious in his uses of it. How easy are his descriptions!-- "Behold the daybreak! The little light fades the immense and diaphanous shadows!" "The comet that came unannounced Out of the north, flaring in heaven." "The fan-shaped explosion." "The slender and jagged threads of lightning, as sudden and fast amid the din they chased each other across the sky."