On the Heights Part 130

The nightingale by yonder brook, sings all day long and through the night. What unwearying power! What an inexhaustible fount of song!

While I write, its song seems to come nearer, as if it knew that I long for it.

I see every opening bud, and wait to see the ferns unfold their leaves.

Even the rough maple has a delicate blossom. Everything is blooming or singing. There is music, even in the cackling of the hens. The world is full of infinite variety.

Oh, how delightful to watch for every green leaf, and for the opening of every bud. Nature's greatest charm is that she is never in haste.

She can wait, and all we need do is--to wait upon her.

At first, we attempt to note every stage of growth, but we soon find that an impossibility.

It needs but a single rainy day, and all the buds burst. Bright spring is with us once again. Spring produces a sort of mental unrest which seems to move in a course parallel with the impulse at work in nature.

The drooping birch is laden with rich cl.u.s.ters of blossoms, and its branches are swayed to and fro in mute yet melodious movements.

The best self-forgetfulness is to regard the things of this world with love and attention.--Perhaps attention already presupposes love, and that of the most unselfish kind.

A cuckoo comes quite close to the house at early morning and utters its cry.

(Whitsuntide.)--The preparations for the festival afford much pleasure, more perhaps than the festival itself. What kneading and baking, and what joy at the successful completion of the festal cake.

Joy which we have prepared for ourselves is perfect joy. And now comes the festival. Trees and human beings seem blooming with life, and yonder forest is borne toward us in the Whitsuntide favors they bring into the house.

Hansei has a new suit of the style worn in this section of the country.

When he walked over the farm to-day, the kindly "good-morning" which he bestowed upon every one seemed full of happiness.

I am very sorry that I am again unable to accompany them to church. The festal feeling reaches its climax in church-going, but, even at home, the air is laden with the fragrant odor of the birch and holiday cake.

(May 24th.)--We have had a furious spring storm, accompanied by thunder and lightning. The trees swayed to and fro and bent as if they would break.

"That's bad," said my little pitchman, "though it's good for the rye. A storm in springtime brings cold weather, while one in midsummer makes the days warmer than before."

How well this symbolizes precocious pa.s.sion.

The bright sunshine has returned. I have been out of doors. Millions of blossoms are strewn about the ground and, in the forest, lay many dead young birds. They had ventured out of their nests too soon; the rain had wet their young wings and they could not return. Besides that, the nest no longer contained room for them. Forsaken and hungry, there was nothing left them but death!

Nature is terrible. It labors long and patiently to bring forth a being which it suddenly and wantonly suffers to die.

Sundays go hardest with me. One is used to look for something unusual on that day. We put on a particular dress and expect the world to do the same. On that day, more than on all others, I feel that I am in a strange world.

The brook murmurs and the birds sing, just as they did yesterday. What right have I to ask them to sing me a different song to-day?

Nature has no moods; they belong to man alone.

In this lies a heavy burden.

In former days, while watching the forms and colors of the clouds, I was obliged to look up into the sky. But now I see them resting on the earth below me.

I can pa.s.s hours, watching the pa.s.sing clouds and their ever-changing forms as reflected on the mountains. The earth itself was fashioned from such fluid ma.s.ses. No artist can realize the extent of this cloud-world, or its wealth of form. Before our thoughts attain fixed shape, they, too, must pa.s.s through this nebulous state, in which, however, we are unable to perceive them.

Singing birds, in great variety, have cl.u.s.tered at the edge of the forest. The notes of the lark, the yellowhammer, the green finch, the blackbird, the thrush, the red-tail, and the t.i.tmouse are heard all at once. Only a few of the birds that build their nests deep in the forest, sing there.

In springtime, forest rills become brooks. In summer, naught is visible, save the dry bed of the stream. It is the same with our own lives.

When old Jochem hears me rejoice because spring has come, he always says: "What does it signify? In a few weeks, the days will begin to shorten again."

If human beings, like the trees, bore visible blossoms, these blossoms would a.s.sume a different shape and color, with each succeeding year.

The blossoms of my soul were once so bright; but now--

For the first time in my life, I have seen a pair of eagles soaring in the air. What a life theirs must be! They hovered far overhead, and described a circle in their flight. About what were they circling? Then they soared still higher and vanished in the empyrean.

The world still contains spirits whose flights are as free and as bold as that of the eagle. There is no creature that soars above the king of birds, no enemy that can approach him. But man sends forth the fatal ball and thus exerts an influence in regions which the eye alone can pierce.

_He_ too was filled with pride when he had shot an eagle. And why?