Steeped in flower and pollen to the music of bees and birds, the
stream of the atmosphere became a living thing. It was life to
breathe it, for the air itself was life. The strength of the earth
went up through the leaves into the wind. Fed thus on the food of
the Immortals, the heart opened to the width and depth of the
summer - to the broad horizon afar, down to the minutest creature
in the grass, up to the highest swallow. Winter shows us Matter in
its dead form, like the Primary rocks, like granite and basalt -
clear but cold and frozen crystal. Summer shows us Matter changing
into life, sap rising from the earth through a million tubes, the
alchemic power of light entering the solid oak; and see! it bursts
forth in countless leaves. Living things leap in the grass, living
things drift upon the air, living things are coming forth to
breathe in every hawthorn bush. No longer does the immense weight
of Matter - the dead, the crystallized - press ponderously on the
thinking mind. The whole office of Matter is to feed life - to
feed the green rushes, and the roses that are about to be; to feed
the swallows above, and us that wander beneath them. So much
greater is this green and common rush than all the Alps.

Fanning so swiftly, the wasp's wings are but just visible as he
passes; did he pause, the light would be apparent through their
texture. On the wings of the dragon-fly as he hovers an instant
before he darts there is a prismatic gleam. These wing textures
are even more delicate than the minute filaments on a swallow's
quill, more delicate than the pollen of a flower. They are formed
of matter indeed, but how exquisitely it is resolved into the means
and organs of life! Though not often consciously recognized,
perhaps this is the great pleasure of summer, to watch the earth,
the dead particles, resolving themselves into the living case of