304 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 



three years. ' It is not the tyranny of anyone that has 

 done it ; it is the tyranny of circumstance, the lot of man.' 

 But the sycamore bud opens ; there are lambs, there are 

 butterflies ; the plough can break the clod. And yet 

 there is no order, he says, as of a drill ; the wild flowers 

 are not found by a foot-measure. 



' Nature has no arrangement, no plan, nothing judicious 

 even. The walnut-trees bring forth their tender buds, 

 and the frost turns them — they have no mosaic of time 

 to fit in, like a Roman tessellated pavement. Nature is 

 like a child, who will sing and shout, though you may be 

 never so deeply pondering in the study, and does not 

 wait for the hour that suits your mind. You do not 

 know what you may find each day. Perhaps you may 

 only pick up a fallen feather, but it is beautiful, every 

 filament. Always beautiful ! everything beautiful ! And 

 are these things new — the ploughman and his team, the 

 lark's song, the green leaf ? Can they be new ? Surely 

 they have been of old time ! They are, indeed, new — 

 the only things that are so ; the rest is old and grey, and 

 a weariness.'* 



So it ends. How true, how false, how unreasonable, it 

 all is ! Why is he not working in the slums to improve 

 the lot of men whom the gods will not help ? He does 

 but add to the difficulty and absurdity of life, to he there 

 ill and poor in the monotonous frost, looking out of the 

 window, all manner of memories, hopes, joys, sorrows 

 coming to his heart as doves to the dovecot. And yet does 

 he not in the end extract more joy than sorrow from it 

 all ? Is it not a triumph of beauty and fife ? It makes 

 for goodness, joy, and beauty in its proclamation that life 

 can endure most dog-like things and yet flourish exceed- 

 ingly. Always these two truths — the exuberance of 

 Nature and the divinity of man. Even if it were all a 

 nightmare, the very truthfulness of the agitated voice, 

 rising and falling in honest contemplation of common 

 sorrows, would preserve it, since it is rarely given to the 



* ' Hours of Spring,' Field and Hedgerow. 



