HOURS OF SPRING. 



thumb, these atoms of quartz, and sunlight shining all 

 that time, and flowers blooming and life glowing in all, 

 myriads of living things, from the cold still limpet 

 on the rock to the burning, throbbing heart of man. 

 Sometimes I found them among the sand of the heath, 

 the sea of golden brown surging up yellow billows six 

 feet high about me, where the dry lizard hid, or basked, 

 of kin, too, to old time. Or the rush of the sea wave 

 brought them to me, wet and gleaming, up from the 

 depths of what unknown Past? where they nestled in the 

 root crevices of trees forgotten before Egypt. The living 

 mind opposite the dead pebble — did you ever consider 

 the strange and wonderful problem there ? Only the 

 thickness of the skin of the hand between them. The 

 chief use of matter is to demonstrate to us the existence 

 of the soul. The pebble-stone tells me I am a soul be- 

 cause I am not that that touches the nerves of my hand. 

 We are distinctly two, utterly separate, and shall never 

 come together. The little pebble and the great sun over- 

 head — millions of miles away : yet is the great sun no 

 more distinct and apart than this which I can touch. 

 Dull-surfaced matter, like a polished mirror, reflects back 

 thought to thought's self within. 



I listened to the sweet-briar wind this morning ; but 

 for weeks and weeks the stark black oaks stood straight 

 out of the snow as masts of ships with furled sails frozen 

 and ice-bound in the haven of the deep valley. Each 

 was visible to the foot, set in the white slope, made 

 individual in the wood by the brilliance of the back- 

 ground. Never was such a long winter. For fully two 

 months they stood in the snow in black armour of iron 

 bark unshaken, the front rank of the forest army that 

 would not yield to the northern invader. Snow in broad 

 flakes, snow in semi-flakes, snow raining down in frozen 



