10 TREES IN NATURE, MYTH & ART 



capital N. Wordsworth thought that mortality 

 must have been a meaningless word to the 

 builders of our Gothic abbeys and cathedrals 

 — of the towers and spires of which we have 

 already taken account. Emerson said that, 

 in the woods, '' a man casts off his years as 

 the snake his slough, and at what period so- 

 ever of life, is always a child. In the woods 

 is perpetual youth. Within these plantations 

 of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, 

 a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest 

 sees not how he should tire of them in a 

 thousand years. In the woods we return to 

 reason and faith. There I feel that nothing 

 can befall me in life, — no disgrace, no calamity 

 (leaving me my eyes), which nature cannot 

 repair. Standing on the bare ground, — my 

 head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted 

 into infinite space, — all mean egotism vanishes. 

 I become a transparent eyeball ; I am nothing ; 

 I see all ; the currents of the Universal Being 

 circulate through me ; I am part or particle of 

 God." 



Emerson here expresses his feeling of what 

 Matthew Arnold called '' Nature's healing 

 power". I have just taken down from the 



