2o8 HUNGARIAN LITERATURE Petőfi was the first who dared to see, as the poet ought to see, and his observation is always sincere. He sees everyth ing arou nd him, and speaks of it, but he sees it with the poet's eye. He was the first whose eye dis covered the beauty of the Hungarian Lowlands. Hun dreds of poets may have passed through the Lowlands and have seen their plains and farms, their roadside inns, horse-herds and highwaymen, but no one detected the element of poetry in them. Petőfi discovered the Low lands for poetry. He seems to have thought : 1 1 Why speak about the snow-capped peaks of Helvetia, or the 'melodious bowers of Arcad ia, ' or the sources of Tiber, when the Hortobágy is here ? Learn to see, and you may find_ poetry in the homely scenes around you." But it was not only that he looked at the Lowlands with other eyes. He differed fro m other poets in his attitude to Nature. Nowhere has Nature been reflected with more youthful freshn ess and dewy beauty, than in his poems . She was no mere spectacie for him, but the extension so to speak of his own mental self. The clouds were his brothers. The Lowlands were the symbol of freedom. On an autumn day he says to his wife : "When thou kissest me, touch my li ps lightly, that we may not disturb the heginning of Nature's Slumber." In his songs, Nature is spiritualised and endowed with feeling. Hills and valleys find voice in his verses, but not to teach some moral lesson, as in fables, but to express their own joys and sorrows. Petőfi not only feels Nature but describes her. His descriptions of scenery are remarkably clear and plastic. An artist could paint them or an engineer draw them on a map. And even these poems are not merely de scriptive, but lyrical as weil, because they are pen etrated
