But There Was No Answer To
That In Any Book Concerning The "Life And Conversation Of Animals." I
Found It In Other Works:
In Brown's Philosophy - another of the ancient
tomes on our shelves - and in an old volume containing appreciations of
the early nineteenth-century poets; also in other works.
They did not
tell me in so many words that it was the mystical faculty in me which
produced those strange rushes or bursts of feeling and lifted me out
of myself at moments; but what I found in their words was sufficient
to show me that the feeling of delight in Nature was an enduring one,
that others had known it, and that it had been a secret source of
happiness throughout their lives.
This revelation, which in other circumstances would have made me
exceedingly happy, only added to my misery when, as it appeared, I had
only a short time to live. Nature could charm, she could enchant me,
and her wordless messages to my soul were to me sweeter than honey and
the honeycomb, but she could not take the sting and victory from
death, and I had perforce to go elsewhere for consolation. Yet even
so, in my worst days, my darkest years, when occupied with the
laborious business of working out my own salvation with fear and
trembling, with that spectre of death always following me, even so I
could not rid my mind of its old passion and delight. The rising and
setting sun, the sight of a lucid blue sky after cloud and rain, the
long unheard familiar call-note of some newly-returned migrant, the
first sight of some flower in spring, would bring back the old emotion
and would be like a sudden ray of sunlight in a dark place - a
momentary intense joy, to be succeeded by ineffable pain.
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