scented hills. Hour after hour, and still not enough. Or walking
the footpath was never long enough, or my strength sufficient to
endure till the mind was weary. The exceeding beauty of the earth,
in her splendour of life, yields a new thought with every petal.
The hours when the mind is absorbed by beauty are the only hours
when we really live, so that the longer we can stay among these
things so much the more is snatched from inevitable Time. Let the
shadow advance upon the dial - I can watch it with equanimity while
it is there to be watched. It is only when the shadow is NOT
there, when the clouds of winter cover it, that the dial is
terrible. The invisible shadow goes on and steals from us. But
now, while I can see the shadow of the tree and watch it slowly
gliding along the surface of the grass, it is mine. These are the
only hours that are not wasted - these hours that absorb the soul
and fill it with beauty. This is real life, and all else is
illusion, or mere endurance. Does this reverie of flowers and
waterfall and song form an ideal, a human ideal, in the mind? It
does; much the same ideal that Phidias sculptured of man and woman
filled with a godlike sense of the violet fields of Greece,
beautiful beyond thought, calm as my turtle-dove before the lurid
lightning of the unknown. To be beautiful and to be calm, without
mental fear, is the ideal of nature. If I cannot achieve it, at
least I can think it.