_Sept. 23._ If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment. If a shower drives us for shelter to the maple grove or the trailing branches of the pine, yet in their recesses with microscopic eye we discover some new wonder in the bark, or the leaves, or the fungi at our feet. We are interested by some new resource of insect economy, or the chickadee is more than usually familiar. We can study Nature's nooks and corners then.[40] MY BOOTS _Oct. 16._ Anon with gaping fearlessness they quaff The dewy nectar with a natural thirst, Or wet their leathern lungs where cranberries lurk, With sweeter wine than Chian, Lesbian, or Falernian far. Theirs was the inward lustre that bespeaks An open sole—unknowing to exclude The cheerful day—a worthier glory far Than that which gilds the outmost rind with darkness visible— Virtues that fast abide through lapse of years, Rather rubbed in than off. HOMER _Oct. 21._ Hector hurrying from rank to rank is likened to the moon wading in majesty from cloud to cloud. We are reminded of the hour of the day by the fact that the woodcutter spreads now his morning meal in the recesses of the mountains, having already laid his axe at the root of many lofty trees.[41] _Oct. 23._ Nestor's simple repast after the rescue of Machaon is a fit subject for poetry. The woodcutter may sit down to his cold victuals, the hero to soldier's fare, and the wild Arab to his dried dates and figs, without offense; but not so a modern gentleman to his dinner. _Oct. 24._ It matters not whether these strains originate there in the grass or float thitherward like atoms of light from the minstrel days of Greece. "The snowflakes fall thick and fast on a winter's day. The winds are lulled, and the snow falls incessant, covering the tops of the mountains, and the hills, and the plains where the lotus tree grows, and the cultivated fields. And they are falling by the inlets and shores of the foaming sea, but are silently dissolved by the waves."[42] SPECULATION _Dec. 7._ We may believe it, but never do we live a quiet, free life, such as Adam's, but are enveloped in an invisible network of speculations. Our progress is only from one such speculation to another, and only at rare intervals do we perceive that it is no progress. Could we for a moment drop this by-play, and simply wonder, without reference or inference! BYRON