Then
Little By Little The Old Influence Began To Re-Assert Itself, And It
Was As If One Was Standing There By Me, One Who Was Always Calm, Who
Saw All Things Clearly, Who Regarded Me With Compassion And Had Come To
Reason With Me.
"Come now," it appeared to say, "open your eyes once
more to the sunshine; let it enter freely and fill your heart, for
there is healing in it and in all nature.
It is true the power you have
worshipped and trusted will destroy you, but you are living to-day and
the day of your end will be determined by chance only. Until you are
called to follow them into that 'world of light,' or it may be of
darkness and oblivion, you are immortal. Think then of to-day, humbly
putting away the rebellion and despondency corroding your life, and it
will be with you as it has been; you shall know again the peace which
passes understanding, the old ineffable happiness in the sights and
sounds of earth. Common things shall seem rare and beautiful to you.
Listen to the chiff-chaff ingeminating the familiar unchanging call and
message of spring. Do you know that this frail feathered mite with its
short, feeble wings has come back from an immense distance, crossing
two continents, crossing mountains, deserts illimitable, and, worst of
all, the salt, grey desert of the sea. North and north-east winds and
snow and sleet assailed it when, weary with its long journey, it drew
near to its bourne, and beat it back, weak and chilled to its little
anxious heart, so that it could hardly keep itself from falling into
the cold, salt waves. Yet no sooner is it here in the ancient home and
cradle of its race, than, all perils and pains forgot, it begins to
tell aloud the overflowing joy of the resurrection, calling earth to
put on her living garment, to rejoice once more in the old undying
gladness - that small trumpet will teach you something. Let your reason
serve you as well as its lower faculties have served this brave little
traveller from a distant land."
Is this then the best consolation my mysterious mentor can offer? How
vain, how false it is! - how little can reason help us! The small bird
exists only in the present; there is no past, nor future, nor knowledge
of death. Its every action is the result of a stimulus from outside;
its "bravery" is but that of a dead leaf or ball of thistle-down
carried away by the blast. Is there no escape, then, from this
intolerable sadness - from the thought of springs that have been, the
beautiful multitudinous life that has vanished? Our maker and mother
mocks at our efforts - at our philosophic refuges, and sweeps them away
with a wave of emotion. And yet there is deliverance, the old way of
escape which is ours, whether we want it or not. Nature herself in her
own good time heals the wound she inflicts - even this most grievous in
seeming when she takes away from us the faith and hope of reunion with
our lost. They may be in a world of light, waiting our coming - we do
not know; but in that place they are unimaginable, their state
inconceivable. They were like us, beings of flesh and blood, or we
should not have loved them. If we cannot grasp their hands their
continued existence is nothing to us. Grief at their loss is just as
great for those who have kept their faith as for those who have lost
it; and on account of its very poignancy it cannot endure in either
case. It fades, returning in its old intensity at ever longer intervals
until it ceases. The poet of nature was wrong when he said that without
his faith in the decay of his senses he would be worse than dead,
echoing the apostle who said that if we had hope in this world only we
should be of all men the most miserable. So, too, was the later poet
wrong when he listened to the waves on Dover beach bringing the eternal
notes of sadness in; when he saw in imagination the ebbing of the great
sea of faith which had made the world so beautiful, in its withdrawal
disclosing the deserts drear and naked shingles of the world. That
desolation, as he imagined it, which made him so unutterably sad, was
due to the erroneous idea that our earthly happiness comes to us from
otherwhere, some region outside our planet, just as one of our modern
philosophers has imagined that the principle of life on earth came
originally from the stars.
The "naked shingles of the world" is but a mood of our transitional
day; the world is just as beautiful as it ever was, and our dead as
much to us as they have ever been, even when faith was at its highest.
They are not wholly, irretrievably lost, even when we cease to remember
them, when their images come no longer unbidden to our minds. They are
present in nature: through ourselves, receiving but what we give, they
have become part and parcel of it and give it an expression. As when
the rain clouds disperse and the sun shines out once more, heaven and
earth are filled with a chastened light, sweet to behold and very
wonderful, so because of our lost ones, because of the old grief at
their loss, the visible world is touched with a new light, a tenderness
and grace and beauty not its own.
XXXII
A WASP AT TABLE
Even to a naturalist with a tolerant feeling for all living things,
both great and small, it is not always an unmixed pleasure to have a
wasp at table. I have occasionally felt a considerable degree of
annoyance at the presence of a self-invited guest of that kind.
Some time ago when walking I sat down at noon on a fallen tree-trunk to
eat my luncheon, which consisted of a hunk of cake and some bananas.
The wind carried the fragrance of the fruit into the adjacent wood, and
very soon wasps began to arrive, until there were fifteen or twenty
about me.
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