64 THE LIFE OF THE FIELDS. 



whether here or whether lying on the shorter sward 

 under the sweeping and graceful birches, or on the 

 thyme-scented hills. Hour after hour, and still not 

 enough. Or walking the footpath was never long 

 enough, or my strength sufficient to endure till the 

 mind was weary. The exceeding beauty of the earth, 

 in her splendour of life, yields a new thought with 

 every petal. The hours when the mind is absorbed 

 by beauty are the only hours when we really live, so 

 that the longer we can stay among these things so 

 much the more is snatched from inevitable Time. Let 

 the shadow advance upon the dial — I can watch it 

 with equanimity while it is there to be watched. It 

 is only when the shadow is not there, when the clouds 

 of winter cover it, that the dial is terrible. The in- 

 visible shadow goes on and steals from us. But now, 

 while I can see the shadow of the tree and watch it 

 slowly gliding along the surface of the grass, it is mine. 

 These are the only hours that are not wasted — these 

 hours that absorb the soul and fill it with beauty. 

 This is real life, and all else is illusion, or mere endur- 

 ance. Does this reverie of flowers and waterfall and 

 song form an ideal, a human ideal, in the mind ? It 

 does ; much the same ideal that Phidias sculptured of 

 man and woman filled with a godlike sense of the 

 violet fields of Greece, beautiful beyond thought, calm 

 as my turtle-dove before the lurid lightning of the 

 unknown. To be beautiful and to be calm, without 

 mental fear, is the ideal of nature. If I cannot achieve 

 it, at least I can think it. 



