224 THE LIGHT OF DAY 



" Now I am terrified at the Earth 1 it is that calm and patient, 

 It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions, 

 It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless suc- 

 cession of diseased corpses, 

 It distills such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor. 

 It renews, with such unwitting looks, its prodigal, annual, sump- 

 tuous crops. 

 It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings 

 from them at last." 



Does this power with which I move my arm he- 

 gin and end in myself ? On the contrary, is it not 

 the same or a part of that which holds the stars and 

 the planets in their places ? In performing the 

 meanest act, do I not draw upon the vast force with 

 which the universe is held together ? Can any- 

 thing transpire of which the Whole does not take 

 cognizance ? " Not a hawthorn blooms," says Victor 

 Hugo, " but is felt at the stars, — not a pebble drops 

 but sends pulsations to the sun." Be assured we are 

 not detached, cut off, by all these billions of miles 

 of space, but still as close and dependent as the fruit 

 that hangs to the branch. 



I cannot tell what the simple apparition of the 

 earth and sky- mean to me ; I think at rare intervals 

 one sees that they have an immense spiritual mean- 

 ing, altogether unspeakable, and that they are the 

 great helps, after all. In the open air I know what 

 the poet means when he swears he will never men- 

 tion love again inside of a house, and that he will 

 follow up these continual lessons of the earth, air, 

 sky, water, — declaring at the outset that he will 

 make the poems of materials, for only thus does he 

 hope to attain to the spiritual. 



