TO go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber
as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though
nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the
stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate
between him and what he touches. One might think the atmosphere was
made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies,
the perpetual presence of the sublime. Seen in the streets of cities,
how great they are! If the stars should appear one night in a thousand
years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many
generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown!
But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe
with their admonishing smile.
The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present,
they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred
impression, when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never
wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort her secret,
and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection. Nature never
became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals, the mountains,
reflected the wisdom of his best hour, as much as they had delighted
the simplicity of his childhood.
When we speak of nature in this manner, we have a distinct but most
poetical sense in the mind. We mean the integrity of impression made by
manifold natural objects. It is this which distinguishes the stick of
timber of the wood-cutter, from the tree of the poet. The charming
landscape which I saw this morning, is indubitably made up of some
twenty or thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning
the woodland beyond. But none of them owns the landscape. There is a
property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate
all the parts, that is, the poet. This is the best part of these men's
farms, yet to this their warranty-deeds give no title.
To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do
not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun
illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the
heart of the child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward
senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the
spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with
heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food. In the presence of
nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows.
Nature says,—he is my creature, and maugre all his impertinent griefs,
he shall be glad with me. Not the sun or the summer alone, but every
hour and season yields its tribute of delight; for every hour and
change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind,
from breathless noon to grimmest midnight. Nature is a setting that
fits equally well a comic or a mourning piece. In good health, the air
is a cordial of incredible virtue. Crossing a bare common, in snow
puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my
thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a
perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. In the woods too,
a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period
soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth.
Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a
perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should
tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and
faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life,—no disgrace,
no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing
on the bare ground,—my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted
into infinite space,—all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent
eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being
circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. The name of the
nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental: to be brothers, to
be acquaintances, —master or servant, is then a trifle and a
disturbance. I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the
wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or
villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line
of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature.
The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, is the
suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am
not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me, and I to them. The waving
of the boughs in the storm, is new to me and old. It takes me by
surprise, and yet is not unknown. Its effect is like that of a higher
thought or a better emotion coming over me, when I deemed I was
thinking justly or doing right.
Yet it is certain that the power to produce this delight, does not
reside in nature, but in man, or in a harmony of both. It is necessary
to use these pleasures with great temperance. For, nature is not always
tricked in holiday attire, but the same scene which yesterday breathed
perfume and glittered as for the frolic of the nymphs, is overspread
with melancholy today. Nature always wears the colors of the spirit. To
a man laboring under calamity, the heat of his own fire hath sadness in
it. Then, there is a kind of contempt of the landscape felt by him who
has just lost by death a dear friend. The sky is less grand as it shuts
down over less worth in the population.