Under the trees . k to Nature andfinding- ones self thus unwelcomed anduncared for, and in the first moment ofdisappointment an unspoken accusation ofchange and coldness lies in the heart. Thechange is not in Nature, however; it is inourselves. The world is too much withus. Not until its strife and tumult fadeinto distance and memory will those finersenses, dulled by contact with a meaner life,restore that which we have lost. After alittle some such thought as this comes tous, and day after day we haunt the silentstreams and the secret places of the forest;waiting, watching, unconsciously brin
Under the trees . k to Nature andfinding- ones self thus unwelcomed anduncared for, and in the first moment ofdisappointment an unspoken accusation ofchange and coldness lies in the heart. Thechange is not in Nature, however; it is inourselves. The world is too much withus. Not until its strife and tumult fadeinto distance and memory will those finersenses, dulled by contact with a meaner life,restore that which we have lost. After alittle some such thought as this comes tous, and day after day we haunt the silentstreams and the secret places of the forest;waiting, watching, unconsciously bringingourselves once more into harmony with thegreat, rich world around us, we forget thetumult out of which we have come, a deeppeace possesses us, and in its unbrokenquietness the old sights and sounds returnagain. Youth, faith, hope, and love springagain out of a soil which had begun to denythem sustenance; old dreams mingle withour waking hours; the old-time channelsof joy, long silent and bare, overflow with161. m-jj. m. i r/ M/JM ?^, streams that restore a lost world of beautyin our souls. We have come back toNature, and she has not denied us, in spiteof our disloyalty. I know of nothing more full of deepdelight than this return of the old compan-ionship, this restoration of the old much there is to recall, how manyconfidences there are to be exchanged!The days are not long enough for all wewould say and hear. Such hours come inthe pine woods; hours so full of the strangesilence of the place, so unbroken by custom-ary habits and thoughts, that no dial coulddivide into fragments a day that was onelong unbroken spell of wonder and remote seemed all human life that evenmemory turned from it and lost herself insilent meditation; so vast and mysteriouswas the life of Nature that the past andthe future seemed part of the changeless pres-ent. The light fell soft and dim throughthe thickly woven branches and among thedensely clustered trunks; underneath, the
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectnatural, bookyear1902
