When the crescent of the new moon shone, all the old thoughts were renewed.

All the succeeding incidents of the year repeated my prayer as
I noted them. The first green leaf on the hawthorn, the first
spike of meadow grass, the first song of the nightingale, the
green ear of wheat. I spoke it with the ear of wheat as the sun
tinted it golden; with the whitening barley; again with the red gold spots
of autumn on the beech, the buff oak leaves, and the gossamer dew-weighted.
All the larks over the green corn sang it for me, all the dear swallows; the
green leaves rustled it; the green brookflags waved it; the swallows took it
with them to repeat it for me in distant lands. By the running brook I
meditated it; a flash of sunlight here in the curve, a flicker yonderon the
ripples, the birds bathing in the sandy shallow, the rush of falling water.
As the brook ran winding through the
meadow, so one thought ran winding through my days.

The sciences I studied never checked it for a moment; nor did the books of
old philosophy. The sun was stronger than science;
the hills more than philosophy. Twice circumstances gave me a brief view of
the sea then the passion rose tumultuous as the
waves. It was very bitter to me to leave the sea.

Sometimes I spent the whole day walking over the hills
searching for it; as if the labour of walking would force it
from the ground. I remained in the woods for hours, among the
ash sprays and the fluttering of the ring-doves at their nests,
the scent of pines here and there, dreaming my prayer.

My work was most uncongenial and useless, but even then sometimes a
gleam of sunlight on the wall, the buzz of a bee at the window, would bring