For Who Could Look On Earth, Water, Sky, On Living Or Growing Or Inanimate Things, Without Experiencing That Mysterious Uplifting Gladness In Him!

In due time I discovered that the thing I sought for in printed books was to be found chiefly in poetry, that half a dozen lines charged with poetic feeling about nature often gave me more satisfaction than a whole volume of prose on such subjects.

Unfortunately this kind of literature was not obtainable in my early home on the then semi-wild pampas. There were a couple of hundred volumes on the shelves - theology, history, biography, philosophy, science, travels, essays, and some old forgotten fiction; but no verse was there, except Shenstone, in a small, shabby, coverless volume. This I read and re-read until I grew sick of bright Roxana tripping o'er the green, or of gentle Delia when a tear bedews her eye to think yon playful kid must die. To my uncultivated mind - for I had never been at school, and lived in the open air with the birds and beasts - this seemed intolerably artificial; for I was like a hungry person who has nothing but kickshaws put before him, and eats because he is hungry until he loathes a food which in its taste confounds the appetite. Never since those distant days have I looked at a Shenstone or even seen his name in print or heard it spoken, without a slight return of that old sensation of nausea. If Shenstone alone had come to me, the desire for poetry would doubtless have been outlived early in life; but there were many passages, some very long, from the poets in various books on the shelves, and these kept my appetite alive.

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