was possessed as with a spirit. I ascended a hill, which looked for
leagues over the sleeping valley. A gray mist hung around me like a
veil; I paused, and the great sun broke slowly forth; I gazed upon its
majesty, and my heart swelled. "So rises the soul," I said, "from the
vapours of this dull being; but the soul waneth not, neither setteth it,
nor knoweth it any night, save that from which it dawneth!" The mists
rolled gradually away, the sunshine deepened, and the face of Nature lay
in smiles, yet silently, before me. It lay before me, a scene that I
had often witnessed and hailed and worshipped: /but it was not the
same/; a glory had passed over it; it was steeped in a beauty and a
holiness, in which neither youth nor poetry nor even love had ever robed
it before! The change which the earth had undergone was like that of
some being we have loved, when death is passed, and from a mortal it
becomes an angel!

I uttered a cry of joy, and was then as silent as all around me. I felt
as if henceforth there was a new compact between Nature and myself. I
felt as if every tree and blade of grass were henceforth to be eloquent
with a voice and instinct with a spell. I felt as if a religion had
entered into the earth, and made oracles of all that the earth bears;
the old fables of Dodona were to become realized, and /the very leaves/
to be hallowed by a sanctity and to murmur with a truth. I was no
longer only a part of that which withers and decays; I was no longer a
machine of clay, moved by a spring, and to be trodden into the mire
which I had trod; I was no longer tied to humanity by links which could
never be broken, and which, if broken, would avail me not. I was
become, as if by a miracle, a part of a vast though unseen spirit. It
was not to the matter, but to the essences, of things that I bore
kindred and alliance; the stars and the heavens resumed over me their
ancient influence; and, as I looked along the far hills and the silent