It was for that reason that I recorded the Swan and the Shadow.

Had there been many swans and many shadows, they would have implied nothing as regards the character of the scene; and I should have said nothing about them.' He proceeded to remark that many who could descant with eloquence on Nature cared little for her, and that many more who truly loved her had yet no eye to discern her--which he regarded as a sort of 'spiritual discernment.' He continued, 'Indeed I have hardly ever known any one but myself who had a true eye for Nature, one that thoroughly understood her meanings and her teachings--except' (here he interrupted himself) 'one person.

There was a young clergyman, called Frederick Faber,[269] who resided at Ambleside.

He had not only as good an eye for Nature as I have, but even a better one, and sometimes pointed out to me on the mountains effects which, with all my great experience, I had never detected.' [269] Afterwards Father Faber of the Oratory.

His 'Sir Launcelot' abounds in admirable descriptions.
Truth, he used to say--that is, truth in its largest sense, as a thing at once real and ideal, a truth including exact and accurate detail, and yet everywhere subordinating mere detail to the spirit of the whole--this, he affirmed, was the soul and essence not only of descriptive poetry, but of all poetry.