NATURE MYTHS AND ALLEGORIES 301 



Here I wandered one September morning; and, as it 

 chanced, a reprint of Blake's ' Marriage of Heaven and Hell ' 

 was in my pocket. Wishful to enjoy the scene and temper 

 my delight with meditation, I flung myself upon the grass 

 beneath an overshadowing tree, and read the sentences which 

 follow : 



If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to 

 man as it is, infinite. 



For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow 

 chinks of his cavern. 



How do you know but every Bird that cuts the airy way, 



Is an immense world of delight, closed by your senses five ? 



One thought fills immensity. 



What is now proved was once only imagined. 



The ancient Poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or Geniuses, 

 calling them by the names and adorning them with the properties of 

 woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their 

 enlarged and numerous senses could perceive. 



As I read, there happened to me something like that which 

 happened to Petrarch upon the summit of Mont Ventoux. 1 



Blake's sentences, pregnant with mysticism, struck a deep 

 chord and chimed with thoughts which were already stirring 

 in me. For a while, I entered into spiritual union with nature, 

 and felt as though the genii of those giant chestnut-trees might 

 pace across the sward, or Pan appear, and saw that everything 

 is infinite, and knew the thought which fills immensity, and 

 hailed * a world of delight ' in the hawk which hovered in the 

 azure depth of air above the glaciers of Bondasca. 



Such moments do not last long, but they leave impressions 

 which contain the germs of future speculation. And so I have 

 written this account of a September morning in the woods of 

 Castasegna in order to introduce some reflections upon the 

 value, real or metaphorical, which mythology still possesses 

 in an age of scientific thought. 



1 See above, p. 193. 



