2 MY DEVON YEAR 



Many a morning brings with it some echo of 

 human emotion so obvious that the analogy strikes 

 instant, almost unconscious, acknowledgment from all, 

 and mankind sighs before a leaden dawn, or lifts his 

 heart with gladness to a sunrise of promise ; but more 

 often the diurnal progress is intermixed with subtler 

 manifestations, and the brooding guardian-spirit of 

 each day must be sought for with a measure of rever- 

 ence and care. Then if your mind is open to such 

 forces, if the key of your heart is surrendered to 

 natural influences, like a dream the secret of the 

 day shall grow upon you, and there shall develop a 

 sort of inner certainty spun of the sky and the things 

 under the sky. Be the day all blue ; be the day all 

 gold ; be the day sad and sobbing a theatre of mad 

 winds, that shake the roof- tree and smite things 

 animate and inanimate to destruction yet secrets it 

 surely holds ; and the brain of man shall win them, 

 shall weave a definite subjective inspiration from the 

 objective revelation of the hour. Thus Nature crowns 

 suit and service at her courts, sometimes with a sort 

 of lyric joy that lifts the heart upon its ebb and flow 

 before her glories, sometimes with full measure of 

 grief at her failure, and not seldom with gravity when 

 we behold the eternal destruction of her unfit. 



I doubt if there exists a passion or shade of passion, 

 a prompting, a repulsion, or a great desire common to 

 man, that some day shall not seem to mirror, though 

 the closeness or subtlety of the likeness must depend 

 upon the mind that seeks and finds it. Such light 



