Thus I Came Out Of The Contest A Loser, But As A Compensation Had The
Knowledge That My Physicians Were False Prophets; That, Barring
Accidents, I Could Count On Thirty, Forty, Even Fifty Years With Their
Summers And Autumns And Winters.
I And that was the life I desired -
the life the heart can conceive - the earth life.
When I hear people
say they have not found the world and life so agreeable or interesting
as to be in love with it, or that they look with equanimity to its
end, I am apt to think they have never been properly alive nor seen
with clear vision the world they think so meanly of, or anything in
it - not a blade of grass. Only I know that mine is an exceptional
case, that the visible world is to me more beautiful and interesting
than to most persons, that the delight I experienced in my communing
with Nature did not pass away, leaving nothing but a recollection of
vanished happiness to intensify a present pain. The happiness was
never lost, but owing to that faculty I have spoken of, had a
cumulative effect on the mind and was mine again, so that in my worst
times, when I was compelled to exist shut out from Nature in London
for long periods, sick and poor and friendless, I could yet always
feel that it was infinitely better to be than not to be.
THE END
*** END OF FAR AWAY AND LONG AGO by W. H. Hudson ***
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