METAPHYSICS OF BEAR HUNTING. 369 



throbbed and felt beneath the sun ; and that His great fire 

 burnt alone for me. Pity that one couldn't live on beams, 

 as they say the poets do. 



I wish I was a poet ! If things have been here, just as 

 they look now, since the Flood, I wonder if the grass, and 

 trees, and sun, have not become tired of each other's faces, 

 everlastingly by the same. It must be quite a relief to them 

 to have me here. 



Who — what hears me when I talk ? The earth, these 

 stolid hills, or the solemn oaks, or the bowed grass ? They 

 all have "airy tongues," and mysterious whisperings have 

 been heard between them. It is evident if they talk they 

 must hear, and if they hear, they surely must pity me. 

 Pity ! I must be whining of pity ! What have I to do 

 with it ? Have I been pitiful to friend or foe ? Have I 

 not swelled, till I was nigh to burst with ravings of defiance 

 to the heavens above and the earth beneath, of the proud 

 mastery of my own will ? Where is it now ? Cowed by 

 silence ! Egad ! I did not know, that as he lay in his 

 "old couch of space and airy cradle," this "silence" was 

 so awful ! I wish I had Atlas' shoulders — that old couch 

 and airy cradle are terribly heavy as they lean upon me ! 



What is this silence and this awe ? Oh, is it God's presence ? 

 . Is this the way he looks and comes — with a fearful calm 

 upon him! Is there a God out here in these tremendous 

 I wilds? I cannot see Him — unless this vast stagnation, this 

 breathless, bare infinitude of waste, this huge, levelled corse 

 be He ! I cannot feel Him, unless it is He, striving to crush 

 my life out with this hideous weight of stillness ! Hah ! He 

 is not, or He is a God who loves to torture. They will not 

 come. I have been set apart for an awful death, that His 

 dread hate may gloat upon my agonies, because I have defied 

 Him. 



It shall not be. I will not starve, I fairly screamed ; life 

 is strong in me, and where the wolf lives, I can live. I'U * 



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