grass and plants put on purpose for it. They were dead, the whole race of
them, and these their skeletons were as dust under my feet. Nature sets
no value upon life neither of minute hill-snail nor of human being.

I thought myself so much to the earliest leaf and the first meadow
orchis--so important that I should note the first zee-zee of the
titlark--that I should pronounce it summer, because now the oaks were
green; I must not miss a day nor an hour in the fields lest something
should escape me. How beautiful the droop of the great brome-grass by the
wood! But to-day I have to listen to the lark's song--not out of doors
with him, but through the window-pane, and the bullfinch carries the
rootlet fibre to his nest without me. They manage without me very well;
they know their times and seasons--not only the civilised rooks, with
their libraries of knowledge in their old nests of reference, but the
stray things of the hedge and the chiffchaff from over sea in the ash
wood. They go on without me. Orchis flower and cowslip--I cannot number
them all--I hear, as it were, the patter of their feet--flower and bud
and the beautiful clouds that go over, with the sweet rush of rain and
burst of sun glory among the leafy trees. They go on, and I am no more
than the least of the empty shells that strewed the sward of the hill.
Nature sets no value upon life, neither of mine nor of the larks that
sang years ago. The earth is all in all to me, but I am nothing to the
earth: it is bitter to know this before you are dead. These delicious
violets are sweet for themselves; they were not shaped and coloured and
gifted with that exquisite proportion and adjustment of odour and hue for
me. High up against the grey cloud I hear the lark through the window
singing, and each note falls into my heart like a knife.

Now this to me speaks as the roll of thunder that cannot be denied--you
must hear it; and how can you shut your ears to what this lark sings,