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Midas (search for this): chapter 2
and blade; the cows lie upon the hillside, with their broad, peaceful backs painted into the landscape; the hum of insects, tiniest bells on the garment of silence, fills the air; the gorgeous butterflies doze upon the thistle-blooms till they almost fall from the petals; the air is full of warm fragrance from the wild-grape clusters; the grass is burning hot beneath the naked feet in sunshine, and cool as water in the shade. Diving from this overhanging beam,—for Ovid evidently meant that Midas to be cured must dive,— Subde caput, corpusque simul, simul elue crinem one finds as kindly a reception from the water as in childish days, and as safe a shelter in the green dressing-room afterwards; and the patient wherry floats near by, in readiness for a re-embarkation. Here a word seems needed, unprofessionally and non-technically, upon boats,—these being the sole scats provided for occupant or visitor in my out-door study. When wherries first appeared in this peaceful inland commun<
Shakespeare (search for this): chapter 2
, these cheap felicities. Sad or sinful is the life of that man who finds not the heavens bluer and the waves more musical in maturity than childhood. Time is a severe alembic of youthful joys, no doubt; we exhaust book after book, and leave Shakespeare unopened; we grow fastidious in men and women; all the rhetoric, all the logic, we fancy we have heard before; we have seen the pictures, we have listened to the symphonies: but what has been done by all the art and literature of the world town the fisherman's cottage by the beach; we associate the Vishnu Purana with lakes and lotuses, Keats with nightingales in forest dim, while the long grass waving on the lonely heath is the last memorial of the fading fame of Ossian. Of course Shakespeare's omniscience included all natural phenomena; but the rest, great or small, associate themselves with some special aspects, and not with the daily atmosphere. Coming to our own times, one must quarrel with Ruskin as taking rather the artist's
Wordsworth (search for this): chapter 2
sanity of thought, which Coleridge so finely makes the crowning attribute of Wordsworth, is in no way so well matured and cultivated as in the society of Nature. There may be extremes and affectations, and Mary Lamb declared that Wordsworth held it doubtful if a dweller in towns had a soul to be saved. During the various phasay in the Pot Tavern? Compare the enormity of pleasure which De Quincey says Wordsworth derived from the simplest natural object, with the serious protest of Wilkie In literature this is easy, the descriptions are so few and so faint. When Wordsworth was fourteen, he stopped one day by the wayside to observe the dark outline othe whole; and one is tempted to charge even Emerson, as he somewhere charges Wordsworth, with not being of a temperament quite liquid and musical enough to admit theerhaps,—an odd triad, surely, for the whimsical nursing mother to select,—are Wordsworth, Bettine Brentano, and Thoreau. Yet what wonderful achievements have some
Hitchcock (search for this): chapter 2
not step out between the sessions of a caucus and give a racy abstract of the landscape. It may consume the best hours of many days to certify for one's self the simplest out-door fact, but every such piece of knowledge is intellectually worth the time. Even the driest and barest book of Natural History is good and nutritious, so far as it goes, if it represents genuine acquaintance; one can find summer in January by poring over the Latin catalogues of Massachusetts plants and animals in Hitchcock's Report. The most commonplace out-door society has the same attraction. Every one of those old outlaws who haunt our New-England ponds and marshes, water-soaked and soakers of something else,—intimate with the pure fluid in that familiarity which breeds contempt,—has yet a wholesome side when you explore his knowledge of frost and freshet, pickerel and musk-rat, and is exceedingly good company while you can keep him beyond scent of the tavern. Any intelligent farmer's boy can give you
Minerva (search for this): chapter 2
, in a safe and heavy boat, they and some blue dragon-flies together, around yonder wooded point. Many a summer afternoon have I rowed joyously with these same maidens beneath these steep and garlanded shores; many a time have they pulled the heavy four-oar, with me as coxswain at the helm,—the said patient steersman being ofttimes insulted by classical allusions from rival boats, satirically comparing him to an indolent Venus drawn by doves, while the oarswomen, in turn, were likened to Minerva with her feet upon a tortoise. Many were the disasters in the earlier days of feminine training:—first of toilet,—straw hats blowing away, hair coming down, hair-pins strewing the floor of the boat, gloves commonly happening to be off at the precise moment of starting, and trials of speed impaired by somebody's oar catching in somebody's pocket. Then the actual difficulties of handling the long and heavy oars,— the first essays at feathering, with a complicated splash of air and water, a
Wilkie Collins (search for this): chapter 2
Once separated from Nature, literature recedes into metaphysics, or dwindles into novels. How ignoble seems the current material of London literary life, for instance, compared with the noble simplicity which, a half-century ago, made the Lake Country an enchanted land forever. Is it worth a voyage to England to sup with Thackeray in the Pot Tavern? Compare the enormity of pleasure which De Quincey says Wordsworth derived from the simplest natural object, with the serious protest of Wilkie Collins against the affectation of caring about Nature at all. Is it not strange, says this most unhappy man, to see how little real hold the objects of the natural world amidst which we live can gain on our hearts and minds? We go to Nature for comfort in joy, and sympathy in trouble, only in books. . . . . . What share have the attractions of Nature ever had in the pleasurable or painful interests and emotions of ourselves or our friends? . . . . . There is surely a reason for this want of in
Seward (search for this): chapter 2
rm a metronome for delicious dreams. Every summer I launch my boat to seek some realm of enchantment beyond all the sordidness and sorrow of earth, and never yet did I fail to ripple, with my prow at least, the outskirts of those magic waters. What spell has fame or wealth to enrich this mid-day blessedness with a joy the more? Yonder barefoot boy, as he drifts silently in his punt beneath the drooping branches of yonder vine-clad bank, has a bliss which no Astor can buy with money, no Seward conquer with votes,—which yet is no monopoly of his, and to which time and experience only add a more subtile and conscious charm. The rich years were given us to increase, not to impair, these cheap felicities. Sad or sinful is the life of that man who finds not the heavens bluer and the waves more musical in maturity than childhood. Time is a severe alembic of youthful joys, no doubt; we exhaust book after book, and leave Shakespeare unopened; we grow fastidious in men and women; all th
Thoreau (search for this): chapter 2
nent, especially, people fancied that all must be tame and second-hand, everything long since duly analyzed and distributed and put up in appropriate quotations, and nothing left for us poor American children but a preoccupied universe. And yet Thoreau camps down by Walden Pond, and shows us that absolutely nothing in Nature has ever yet been described,—not a bird nor a berry of the woods, nor a drop of water, nor a spicula of ice, nor summer, nor winter, nor sun, nor star. Indeed, no persoo admit the full vibration of the great harmonies. The three human foster-children who have been taken nearest into Nature's bosom, perhaps,—an odd triad, surely, for the whimsical nursing mother to select,—are Wordsworth, Bettine Brentano, and Thoreau. Yet what wonderful achievements have some of the fragmentary artists performed! Some of Tennyson's wordpictures, for instance, bear almost as much study as the landscape. One afternoon, last spring, I had been walking through a copse of yo<
Tennyson (search for this): chapter 2
en nearest into Nature's bosom, perhaps,—an odd triad, surely, for the whimsical nursing mother to select,—are Wordsworth, Bettine Brentano, and Thoreau. Yet what wonderful achievements have some of the fragmentary artists performed! Some of Tennyson's wordpictures, for instance, bear almost as much study as the landscape. One afternoon, last spring, I had been walking through a copse of young white birches,—their leaves scarce yet apparent,—over a ground delicate with wood-anemones, moist of last year's reeds, and absolutely flaming with the gayest yellow light from great clumps of cowslips. The illumination seemed perfectly weird and dazzling; the spirit of the place appeared live, wild, fantastic, almost human. Now open your Tennyson:— And the wild marsh-marigold shines like fire in swamps and hollows gray. Our cowslip is the English marsh-marigold. History is a grander poetry, and it is often urged that the features of Nature in America must seem tame because they
Richelieu (search for this): chapter 2
that the features of Nature in America must seem tame because they have no legendary wreaths to decorate them. It is perhaps hard for those of us who are untravelled to appreciate how densely even the rural parts of Europe are overgrown with this ivy of associations. Thus, it is fascinating to hear that the great French forests of Fontainebleau and St. Germain are full of historic trees,—the oak of Charlemagne, the oak of Clovis, of Queen Blanche, of Henri Quatre, of Sully,—the alley of Richelieu,—the rendezvous of St. Herem,—the star of Lamballe and of the Princesses, a star being a point where several paths or roads converge. It is said that every topographical work upon these forests has turned out to be a history of the French monarchy. Yet surely we lose nearly as much as we gain by this subordination of imperishable beauty to the perishable memories of man. It may not be wholly unfortunate, that, in the absence of those influences which come to older nations from ruins and
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