METAPHYSICS OF BEAR HUNTING. 369 
throbbed and felt beneath the sun; and that His great fire 
burnt alone for me. Pity that one couldn’t live on beams, 
as they say the poets do. 
I wish I was a poet! If things have been here, just as 
they look now, since the Flood, I wonder if the grass, and 
trees, and sun, have not become tired of each other’s faces, 
everlastingly by the same. It must be quite a relief to them 
to have me here. 
Who—what hears me when I talk? ‘The earth, these 
stolid hills, or the solemn oaks, or the bowed grass? They 
all have ‘“‘airy tongues,” and mysterious whisperings have 
been heard between them. It is evident if they talk they 
must hear, and if they hear, they surely must pity me. 
Pity! I must be whining of pity! What have I to do 
with it? Have I been pitiful to friend or foe? Have I 
not swelled, till I was nigh to burst with ravings of defiance 
to the heavens above and the earth beneath, of the proud 
mastery of my own will? Where is it now? Cowed by 
silence! Egad! I did not know, that as he lay in his 
“old couch of space and airy cradle,” this “‘silence’’ was 
so awful! I wish I had Atlas’ shoulders—that old couch 
and airy cradle are terribly heavy as they lean upon me! 
What is this silence and this awe? Oh, is it God’s presence? 
Is this the way he looks and comes—with a fearful calm 
upon him! Is there a God out here in these tremendous 
wilds? I cannot see Him—unless this vast stagnation, this 
breathless, bare infinitude of waste, this huge, levelled corse 
be He! I cannot feel Him, unless it is He, striving to crush 
my life out with this hideous weight of stillness! Hah! He 
is not, or He is a God who loves to torture. They will not 
come. I have been set apart for an awful death, that His 
dread hate may gloat upon my agonies, because I have defied 
Him. 
It shall not be. I will not starve, I fairly screamed ; life 
is strong in me, and where the wolf lives, I can live. I'll 
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