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 crystallised--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
ween 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 he 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
recognised, perhaps this is the great pleasure of summer, to watch the
earth, the dead particles, resolving themselves into the living case of
life, to see the seed-leaf push aside the clod and become by degrees the
perfumed flower. From the tiny mottled egg come the wings that by-and-by
shall pass the immense sea. It is in this marvellous transformation of
clods and cold matter into living things that the joy and the hope of
summer reside. Every blade of grass, each leaf, each separate floret and
petal, is an inscription speaking of hope. Consider the grasses and the
oaks, the swallows, the sweet blue butterfly--they are one and all a sign
and token showing before our eyes earth made into life. So that my hope
becomes as broad as the horizon afar, reiterated by every leaf, sung on
every bough, reflected in the gleam of every flower. There is so much for