TEE PAGEANT OF SUMMER. 43 



shore the ethereal essence of ocean, so the air lingering 

 among the woods and hedges — green waves and billows 

 — became full of fine atoms of summer. Swept from 

 notched hawthorn leaves, broad-topped oak-leaves, 

 narrow ash sprays and oval willows ; from vast elm 

 cliffs and sharp-taloned brambles under ; brushed from 

 the waving grasses and stiffening corn, the dust of the 

 sunshine was borne along and breathed. Steeped in 

 flower and pollen to the music of bees and birds, the 

 stream of the atmosphere became a living thing. It 

 was life to breathe it, for the air itself was life. The 

 strength of the earth went up through the leaves into 

 the wind. Fed thus on the food of the Immortals, the 

 heart opened to the width and depth of the summer 

 — to the broad horizon afar, down to the minutest 

 creature in the grass, up to the highest swallow. 

 Winter shows us Matter in its dead form, like the 

 Primary rocks, like granite and basalt — clear but cold 

 and frozen crystal. Summer shows us Matter chang- 

 ing into life, sap rising from the earth through a 

 million tubes, the alchemic power of light entering the 

 solid oak ; and see ! it bursts forth in countless leaves. 

 Living things leap in the grass, living things drift 

 upon the air, living things are coming forth to breathe 

 in every hawthorn bush. No longer does the immense 

 weight of Matter — the dead, the crystallized — press 

 ponderously on the thinking mind. The whole office 

 of Matter is to feed life — to feed the green rushes, and 

 the roses that are about to be ; to feed the swallows 

 above, and us that wander beneath them. So much 

 greater is this green and common rush than all the 

 Alps. 



