“For most purposes, then, Nature in them [the Romantic poets] means the country as opposed to the town, though it may in particular passages be extended to cover the sun, moon and stars. It may also, despite its frequent opposition to ‘man’, sometimes cover the rustic way of (human) life. It is the country conceived as something not ‘man-made’; Cowper’s (or Varro’s) maxim that God made the country and man made the town is always more or less present. That the landscape in most civilized countries is through and through modified by human skill and toil, or that the effect of most ‘town-scapes’ is enormously indebted to atmospheric conditions, is overlooked.”
—C. S. Lewis, Studies in Words
