THE SECRET OF THE DAY 5 



flowers and waking life, where golden green encano- 

 pies young Spring, and yet paint no superficial picture 

 of happiness. For I have known a stormy hour that 

 held pure peace, an hour wherein the very bending, 

 beaten boughs, that leapt back each to its place 

 between the blasts, heartened a man ; while, con- 

 versely, out of moments between vernal showers, 

 when every thrush has been a prophet of good, 

 and love was lord, the secret of the day was strife. 



For out of the hum of the insects' countless 

 gauzes, the drone of the bees at pollen and honey, 

 and the gleam and flash of all manner of wings that 

 jewel the soft green shadows of the Spring, there may 

 spread chill sense of primal feud again, of great 

 battle, of hungry hosts still in the Qgg, of an infinity 

 of beautiful banners spread under June sunshine only 

 to hide the mortal war below. Such a truth stabs one. 

 A single riddled, tattered leaf will tell it ; or a dead 

 nursling, fallen from the bough untimely ; or the wail 

 of grief outpoured by a bird who, returning to her 

 nest, finds a red weasel there. Some of these things 

 supply a tonic to reason. They do not harden the 

 heart, but sober it. 



And days there are beyond all probing — days and 

 nights that reserve or deny their secret and leave the 

 searcher neither happy nor sad, but full of wonder. 

 I have seen the world under phases of which I formed 

 no part and could form no part. There has been a 

 great gulf fixed between my Mother Earth and me. 

 Yesterday I was one with the heath and the stone, 



