Nature is prepared to welcome into her scenery the finest work of
human art, for she is herself an art so cunning that the artist
never appears in his work.
Art is not tame, and Nature is not wild, in the ordinary sense.
A perfect work of man's art would also be wild or natural in a
good sense. Man tames Nature only that he may at last make her
more free even than he found her, though he may never yet have
succeeded.
With this propitious breeze, and the help of our oars, we soon
reached the Falls of Amoskeag, and the mouth of the Piscataquoag,
and recognized, as we swept rapidly by, many a fair bank and
islet on which our eyes had rested in the upward passage. Our
boat was like that which Chaucer describes in his Dream, in which
the knight took his departure from the island,
"To journey for his marriage,
And return with such an host,
That wedded might be least and most. . . . .
Which barge was as a man's thought,
After his pleasure to him brought,
The queene herself accustomed aye
In the same barge to play,
It needed neither mast ne rother,
I have not heard of such another,
No master for the governance,
Hie sayled by thought and pleasaunce,
Without labor east and west,
All was one, calme or tempest.
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