"O mother Earth, by the bright sky above thee, I love thee, O, I love thee! So let me leave thee never, But cling to thee for ever, And hover round thy mountains, And flutter round thy fountains, And pry into thy roses fresh and red; And blush in all thy blushes, And flush in all thy flushes, And watch when thou art sleeping, And weep when thou art weeping, And be carried with thy motion, As the rivers and the ocean, As the great rocks and the trees are-- O mother, this were glorious life, This were not to be dead. O mother Earth, by the bright sky above thee, I love thee, O, I love thee! " CHAPTER XXXIII SEASONS, VEGETATION, ANIMALS The seasons and the months, especially those of the temperate zones--how saturated with mysticism! The wealth of illustration is so abounding that choice is wellnigh paralysed. Poets and nature lovers are never weary of drawing on its inexhaustible supplies. Take these verses from Tennyson's "Early Spring": "Opens a door in Heaven; From skies of glass A Jacob's ladder falls On greening grass, And o'er the mountain-walls Young angels pass. For now the Heavenly Power Makes all things new And thaws the cold and fills The flower with dew; The blackbirds have their wills, The poets too." Or take these exultant lines from Coventry Patmore's "Revulsion" Canto: "'Twas when the spousal time of May Hangs all the hedge with bridal wreaths, And air's so sweet the bosom gay Gives thanks for every breath it breathes; When like to like is gladly moved, And each thing joins in Spring's refrain, 'Let those love now who never loved; Let those who have loved, love again.'" Recall the poems that celebrate in endless chorus the emotions stirred by the pomp and glory of the summer; by the fruitfulness or sadness of the mellow autumn; by the keen exhilaration or the frozen grip of winter. Some poets, like Blake, have written special odes or sonnets on all the four; some like Keats, in his "Ode to Autumn," have lavished their most consummate art on the season which most appealed to them. Each month, too, has its bards; its special group of qualities and the sentiments they stimulate. Truly the heart of the nature-mystic rejoices as he reflects on the inexhaustibility of material and of significance here presented!