40 BIRDS AND MAN 



stored within us — if we have had the habit of 

 seeing beauty everywhere and of viewing all 

 beautiful things with appreciation — this incal- 

 culable wealth of images of vanished scenes, 

 which is one of our best and dearest possessions, 

 and a joy for ever. 



" What asketh man to have ? " cried Chaucer, 

 and goes on to say in bitterest words that " now 

 with his love" he must soon lie in "the colde 

 grave — alone, withouten any companie." 



What he asketh to have, I suppose, is a blue 

 diamond — some unattainable good ; and in the 

 meantime, just to go on with, certain pleasant 

 things which perish in the using. 



These same pleasant things are not to be 

 despised, but they leave nothing for the mind in 

 hungry days to feed upon, and can be of no 

 comfort to one who is shut up within himself 

 by age and bodily infirmities and the decay 

 of the senses ; on the contrary, the recollection 

 of them at such times, as has been said, can but 

 serve to make a present misery more poignantly 

 felt. 



It was the nobly expressed consolation of an 

 American poet, now dead, when standing in the 



