But where is the instructed
teacher? Where are the _normal_ schools?
A Hindoo sage said, "As a dancer, having exhibited herself to the
spectator, desists from the dance, so does Nature desist, having
manifested herself to soul - . Nothing, in my opinion, is more
gentle than Nature; once aware of having been seen, she does not
again expose herself to the gaze of soul."
It is easier to discover another such a new world as Columbus
did, than to go within one fold of this which we appear to know
so well; the land is lost sight of, the compass varies, and
mankind mutiny; and still history accumulates like rubbish before
the portals of nature. But there is only necessary a moment's
sanity and sound senses, to teach us that there is a nature
behind the ordinary, in which we have only some vague pre-emption
right and western reserve as yet. We live on the outskirts of
that region. Carved wood, and floating boughs, and sunset skies,
are all that we know of it. We are not to be imposed on by the
longest spell of weather. Let us not, my friends, be wheedled
and cheated into good behavior to earn the salt of our eternal
porridge, whoever they are that attempt it. Let us wait a
little, and not purchase any clearing here, trusting that richer
bottoms will soon be put up. It is but thin soil where we stand;
I have felt my roots in a richer ere this. I have seen a bunch
of violets in a glass vase, tied loosely with a straw, which
reminded me of myself.
I am a parcel of vain strivings tied
By a chance bond together,
Dangling this way and that, their links
Were made so loose and wide,
Methinks,
For milder weather.
A bunch of violets without their roots,
And sorrel intermixed,
Encircled by a wisp of straw
Once coiled about their shoots,
The law
By which I'm fixed.
A nosegay which Time clutched from out
Those fair Elysian fields,
With weeds and broken stems, in haste,
Doth make the rabble rout
That waste
The day he yields.
And here I bloom for a short hour unseen,
Drinking my juices up,
With no root in the land
To keep my branches green,
But stand
In a bare cup.
Some tender buds were left upon my stem
In mimicry of life,
But ah! the children will not know,
Till time has withered them,
The woe
With which they're rife.
But now I see I was not plucked for naught,
And after in life's vase
Of glass set while I might survive,
But by a kind hand brought
Alive
To a strange place.
