To Watch Every June And July For
Spring, To Feel The Same Old Sweet Surprise And Delight At The
Appearance Of Each Familiar Flower, Every New-Born Insect, Every Bird
Returned Once More From The North.
To listen in a trance of delight to
the wild notes of the golden plover coming once more to the great
plain, flying, flying south, flock succeeding flock the whole day
long.
Oh, those wild beautiful cries of the golden plover! I could
exclaim with Hafiz, with but one word changed: "If after a thousand
years that sound should float o'er my tomb, my bones uprising in their
gladness would dance in the sepulchre!" To climb trees and put my hand
down in the deep hot nest of the Biente-veo and feel the hot eggs - the
five long pointed cream-coloured eggs with chocolate spots and
splashes at the larger end. To lie on a grassy bank with the blue
water between me and beds of tall bulrushes, listening to the
mysterious sounds of the wind and of hidden rails and coots and
courlans conversing together in strange human-like tones; to let my
sight dwell and feast on the _camalote_ flower amid its floating
masses of moist vivid green leaves - the large alamanda-like flower of
a purest divine yellow that when plucked sheds its lovely petals, to
leave you with nothing but a green stem in your hand. To ride at noon
on the hottest days, when the whole earth is a-glitter with illusory
water, and see the cattle and horses in thousands, covering the plain
at their watering-places; to visit some haunt of large birds at that
still, hot hour and see storks, ibises, grey herons, egrets of a
dazzling whiteness, and rose-coloured spoonbills and flamingoes,
standing in the shallow water in which their motionless forms are
reflected. To lie on my back on the rust-brown grass in January and
gaze up at the wide hot whitey-blue sky, peopled with millions and
myriads of glistening balls of thistle-down, ever, ever floating by;
to gaze and gaze until they are to me living things and I, in an
ecstasy, am with them, floating in that immense shining void!
And now it seemed that I was about to lose it - this glad emotion which
had made the world what it was to me, an enchanted realm, a nature at
once natural and supernatural; it would fade and lessen imperceptibly
day by day, year by year, as I became more and more absorbed in the
dull business of life, until it would be lost as effectually as if I
had ceased to see and hear and palpitate, and my warm body had grown
cold and stiff in death, and, like the dead and the living, I should
be unconscious of my loss.
It was not a unique nor a singular feeling: it is known to other boys,
as I have read and heard; also I have occasionally met with one who,
in a rare moment of confidence, has confessed that he has been
troubled at times at the thought of all he would lose.
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