There are few sights in Nature more restful to the soul than a daisied
field in June. Whether it be at the dewy hour of sunrise, with blithe
matin songs still echoing among the treetops, or while the luxuriant
splendour of noontide fills the delicate tints of the early foliage with
a pure glory of light, or in that more pensive time when long shadows
are thrown eastward and the fresh breath of the sea is felt, or even
under the solemn mantle of darkness, when all forms have faded from
sight and the night air is musical with the murmurs of innumerable
insects, amid all the varying moods through which the daily cycle runs,
the abiding sense is of unalloyed happiness, the profound tranquillity
of mind and heart that nothing ever brings save the contemplation of
perfect beauty. One's thought is carried back for the moment to that
morning of the world when God looked upon his work and saw that it was
good. If in the infinite and eternal Creative Energy one might imagine
some inherent impulse perpetually urging toward fresh creation, what
could it be more likely to be than the divine contentment in giving
objective existence to the boundless and subtle harmonies whereof our
world is made? That it is a world of perfect harmony and unsullied
beauty, who can doubt as he strolls through this summer field? As our
thought plays lightly with its sights and sounds, there is nothing but
gladness in the laugh of the bobolink; the thrush's tender note tells
only of the sweet domestic companionship of the nest; creeping and
winged things emerging from their grubs fill us with the sense of
abounding life; and the myriad buttercups, hallowed with vague memories
of June days in childhood, lose none of their charm in reminding us of
the profound sympathy and mutual dependence in which the worlds of
flowers and insects have grown up. The blades of waving grass, the
fluttering leaves upon the lilac bush, appeal to us with rare
fascination; for the green stuff that fills their cellular tissues, and
the tissues of all green things that grow, is the world's great
inimitable worker of wonders; its marvellous alchemy takes dead matter
and breathes into it the breath of life. But for that magician
chlorophyll, conjuring with sunbeams, such things as animal life and
conscious intelligence would be impossible; there would be no problems
of creation, nor philosopher to speculate upon them. Thus the delight
that sense impression gives, as we wander among buttercups and daisies,
becomes deepened into gratitude and veneration, till we quite understand
how the rejuvenescence of Nature should in all ages have aroused men to
acts of worship, and should call forth from modern masters of music, the
most religious of the arts of expression, outbursts of sublimest song.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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