By John C. Merriam*

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*President, Carnegie Institution of Washington.

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LITERATURE concerning great natural features includes two principal types of writing; one presents description or record of things observed, the other gives us personal or human impressions of what is seen. Though description furnishes essential information, it may not give as accurate an idea of reality as is contributed through the medium of what we sometimes call human appreciation.

For anything possessing as many extraordinary features as the Grand Canyon, it is not to be expected that an adequate representation will be found in description alone. Nor is it to be assumed that any single statement concerning human appreciation will be wholly satisfactory for every one. The most effective picturing may be discovered in a human impression combined with details of description, or it may arise through expression of a human reaction that is in some measure built out of our inheritance from age-long experience in the spiritual life of mankind.

Although the poet is commonly recognized as having such liberty in use of facts that his writings are not to be considered of special value as description of nature, at times his form of statement carries the effect of reality in a manner rarely attained by rigorously accurate scientific description. Such, for example, is the value of the following lines in Tennyson's description of erosion:

The hills are shadows, and they flow
From form to form, and nothing stands.
They pass like clouds, the solid lands.
Like clouds they shape themselves and go.

No other picture has presented so clear a vision of what one senses in the atmosphere and in changing forms of the land at Grand Canyon.

Henry Van Dyke's poem, addressed to "The Grand Canyon" must be classed among the greater efforts to formulate something of the impression made by the Canyon. The origin of these verses illustrates the manner in which a statement that is not narrowly descriptive may convey an idea of reality in terms of human appreciation, when an attempt to delineate elements closely might fail to satisfy the purpose in view.

In a conversation with Dr. Van Dyke some years ago I learned that he had twice visited Grand Canyon with the idea of writing a poem such as was finally embodied in his well known verses. On each occasion, with all of the materials before him, he failed to develop a satisfactory description or conception and left, despairing of ever creating anything approaching his ideal.

After his second attempt to produce a satisfactory picture of the Canyon, Dr. Van Dyke visited one of the Pacific Coast cities where, in an upper story of a large hotel, in the midst of the hurry of business activities, there came to him the ideas he desired.

In giving the story of this experience, Dr. Van Dyke left with me the impression that, on his two visits to the Canyon, study of the multitude of beautiful and sublime objects immediately before him brought such a wealth of thought that selection and definition of the greatest attributes seemed impossible.

Only when from a distance in apace and time values of the lesser elements began to fade was he aware of the things so overwhelmingly important that their imprint on his mind remained clear and in proper relation to the picture as a whole.

Among the lines in Van Dyke's poem on the Grand Canyon that are especially impressive one finds the following:

Thou vast profound, primeval hiding place
          of ancient secrets - - - - - -
Art thou a grave, a prison, or a shrine?

- - -A living silence breathes
Perpetual incense from thy dim abyss.

Yet no confusion fills the awful chasm;
But spacious order and a sense of peace
Brood over all.

Who gave thee power upon the soul of man
To lift him up through wonder into joy?

Now far beyond all language and all art
The secret of thy stillness lies unveiled
- - - - - - - - -This is holy ground,
Thou art no grave, no prison, but a shrine.