"I cannot tell what ye say, brown streams, I cannot tell what ye say; But I know, in you too, a spirit doth live, And a word in you this day." "Oh! rose is the colour of love and youth, And green is the colour of faith and truth, And brown of the fruitful clay. The earth is fruitful and faithful and young, And her bridal morn shall rise erelong, And you shall know what the rocks and streams And the laughing green woods say." _Dartside_, _August_ 1849. Sight and Insight. August 1. Do the work that's nearest, Though it's dull at whiles, Helping, when you meet them, Lame dogs over stiles; See in every hedgerow Marks of angels' feet, Epics in each pebble Underneath our feet. _The Invitation_. 1857. Genius and Character. August 2. I have no respect for genius (I do not even acknowledge its existence) where there is no strength and steadiness of character. If any one pretends to be more than a man he must begin by proving himself a man at all. _Two Years Ago_, chap. xv. Nature's Student. August 3. The perfect naturalist must be of a reverent turn of mind--giving Nature credit for an inexhaustible fertility and variety, which will keep him his life long, always reverent, yet never superstitious; wondering at the commonest, but not surprised by the most strange; free from the idols of sense and sensuous loveliness; able to see grandeur in the minutest objects, beauty in the most ungainly: estimating each thing not carnally, as the vulgar do, by its size, . . . but spiritually, by the amount of Divine thought revealed to him therein. . . . _Glaucus_. 1855. The Masses. August 4. Though permitted evils should not avenge themselves by any political retribution, yet avenge themselves, if unredressed, they surely will. They affect masses too large, interests too serious, not to make themselves bitterly felt some day. . . . We may choose to look on the masses in the gross as objects for statistics--and of course, where possible, for profits. There is One above who knows every thirst, and ache, and sorrow, and temptation of each slattern, and gin-drinker, and street-boy. The day will come when He will require an account of these neglects of ours--not in the gross. _Miscellanies_. 1851. We sit in a cloud, and sing like pictured angels, And say the world runs smooth--while right below Welters the black, fermenting heap of life On which our State is built. _Saint's Tragedy_, Act ii. Scene v. Love and Knowledge. August 5. He who has never loved, what does he know? _MS._ Siccum Lumen. August 6.