A RETURN TO NATURE 87 



" I dare not say I live. And yet the cows, the well-fed, 

 quiet cows, in this fine soft weather stare enviously at 

 me through the gate, though they know nothing of death, 

 and I know it must come, and that even though often 



desired, when it comes it will be unwelcome Yet 



they stare enviously at me, I am sure. 



" I have no courage. I can at least endure. I can use 

 my freedom to become a slave again, and at least I know 

 that I have lost nothing by my way of living. Yes, I 

 can endure, and if after my death I am asked questions 

 difficult to answer, I can ask one that is unanswerable 

 which I have many times asked myself — often in London, 

 but not here. Here I love my food and my work, my 

 rest. My dreams are good. I am not unkindly spoken 

 to; I make no enemies. 



" But yet I cannot look forward — there is nothing 

 ahead — ^just as I cannot look back. My people have not > 

 built; they were not settled on the earth; they did 

 nothing; they were oil or grit in a great machine; they 

 took their food and shelter modestly and not ungratefully 

 from powers above that were neither kind nor cruel. I 

 hope I do no less; I wish I could do more. 



" Now again returns that old feeling of my childhood 

 — I felt it when I had left my cousin — I have felt it 

 suddenly not only in London, but on the top of the 

 Downs and by the sea; the immense loneliness of the 7 

 world, as if the next moment I might be outside of all 

 visible things. You know how it is, on a still summer 

 evening, so warm that the ploughman and his wife have 

 not sent their children to bed, and they are playing, and 

 their loud voices startle the thought of the woods; my 



