36 BIRDS AND MAN 



beauty everywhere and of viewing all beautiful 

 things with appreciation — this incalculable wealth 

 of images of vanished scenes, which is one of our best 

 and dearest possessions, and a joy for ever. 



" What asketh man to have ? " cried Chaucer, 

 and goes on to say in bitterest words that " now 

 with his love " he must soon lie in " the colde grave 

 — alone, withouten any companie." 



What he asketh to have, I suppose, is a blue 

 diamond — some unattainable good ; and in the 

 meantime, just to go on with, certain pleasant 

 things which perish in the using. 



These same pleasant things are not to be despised, 

 but they leave nothing for the mind in hungry days to 

 feed upon, and can be of no comfort to one who is shut 

 up within himself by age and bodily infirmities and the 

 decay of the senses ; on the contrary, the recollection 

 of them at such times, as has been said, can but 

 serve to make a present misery more poignantly felt. 



It was the nobly expressed consolation of an 

 American poet, now dead, when standing in the 

 summer sunshine amid a fine prospect of woods 

 and hills, to think, when he remembered the dark- 

 ness of decay and the grave, that he had beheld 

 in nature, though but for a moment, 



The brightness of the skirts of God. 



