From "From Touches of Nature" [Birds and Poets]
"There are those who look at Nature from the standpoint
of conventional and artificial life,--from parlor windows
and through gilt-edged poems,--the sentimentalists. At the
other extreme are those who do not look at Nature at all,
but are a grown part of her, and look away from her toward
the other class,--the backwoodsman and pioneers, and all
rude and simple persons. There there are those in whom the
two are united or merged,--the great poets and artists. In
them the sentimentalist is corrected and cured, and the
hairy and taciturn frontiersman has had experience to some
purpose. The true poet knows more about Nature than the
naturalists because he carries her open secrets in his
heart."
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