I have lost my voracious appetite for books; their language is less
plain than scent and song and the wind in the trees; and for me the
clue to the next world lies in the wisdom of earth rather than in
the learning of men. "Libera me ab fuscina Hophni," prayed the
good Bishop fearful of religious greed. I know too much, not too
little; it is realisation that I lack, wherefore I desire these
last days to confirm in myself the sustaining goodness of God, the
love which is our continuing city, the New Jerusalem whose length,
breadth, and height are all one. It is a time of exceeding peace.
There is a place waiting for me under the firs in the quiet
churchyard; thanks to my poverty I have no worldly anxieties or
personal dispositions; and I am rich in friends, many of them
unknown to me, who lavishly supply my needs and make it ideal to
live on the charity of one's fellow-men. I am most gladly in debt
to all the world; and to Earth, my mother, for her great beauty.

I can never remember the time when I did not love her, this mother
of mine with her wonderful garments and ordered loveliness, her
tender care and patient bearing of man's burden. In the earliest
days of my lonely childhood I used to lie chin on hand amid the
milkmaids, red sorrel, and heavy spear-grass listening to her many
voices, and above all to the voice of the little brook which ran
through the meadows where I used to play: I think it has run
through my whole life also, to lose itself at last, not in the
great sea but in the river that maketh glad the City of God.
Valley and plain, mountain and fruitful field; the lark's song and
the speedwell in the grass; surely a man need not sigh for greater
loveliness until he has read something more of this living letter,
and knelt before that earth of which he is the only confusion.