. . .
Nature will not be come at directly, but indirectly; all her ways
are retiring and elusive, and she is more apt to reveal herself
to her quiet, unobtrusive lover, than to her formal, ceremonious
suitor. A man who goes out to admire the sunset, or to catch the
spirit of field and grove, will very likely come back disappointed.
A bird seldom sings when watched, and Nature is no coquette, and
will not ogle and attitudinize when stared at. The farmer and
traveler drink deepest of this cup, because it is always a surprise
and comes without forethought or preparation. No insulation or
entanglement takes place, and the soothing, medicinal influence
of the fields and the wood takes possession of us as quietly as a
dream, and before we know it we are living the life of the grass
and the trees.
How unconsciously here he describes his own intercourse with
Nature! And what an unusual production for a youth of twenty-three
of such meagre educational advantages!
In 1862, in an essay on "Some of the Ways of Power," which appeared
in the "Leader," he celebrated the beauty and completeness of
nature's inexorable laws:--
There is an evident earnestness and seriousness in the meaning of
things, and the laws that traverse nature and our own being are
as fixed and inexorable, though, maybe, less instantaneous and
immediate in their operation, as the principle of gravitation,
and are as little disposed to pardon the violator or adjourn the
day of adjudication.
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