The Story of My Heart | Page 7

the air, the lizard-dragon
wallowing in sea foam, the mountainous creatures, twice-elephantine,
feeding on land; all the crooked sequence of life. The dragon-fly which
passed me traced a continuous descent from the fly marked on stone in
those days. The immense time lifted me like a wave rolling under a
boat; my mind seemed to raise itself as the swell of the cycles came; it
felt strongwith the power of the ages. With all thattime and power I
prayed: that I might have in my soul the intellectual part of it; theidea,
the thought. Like a shuttle the mind shot to and fro the past and the

present, in an instant.
Full to the brim of the wondrous past, I felt the wondrous present. For
the day--the very moment I breathed, that second of time then in the
valley, was as marvellous, as grand, as all that had gone before. Now,
this moment was the wonder and the glory.Now,this moment was
exceedingly wonder- ful. Now, this moment give me all the thought, all
the idea, ali the soul expressed in the cosmos around me. Give me still
more, for the interminable universe, past and present, is but earth; give
me the unknown soul, wholly apart from it, the soul of which I know
only that when I touch the ground, when the sunlight touches my
hand,it is not there. Therefore the heart looks into space to be away
from earth. With all the cycles, and the sunlight streaming through
them, with all that is meant by the present, I thought in the deep vale
and prayed.
There was a secluded spring to which I sometimes went to drink the
pure water, lifting it in the hollow of my hand. Drinking the lucid water,
clear as light itself in solution, I absorbed the beauty and purity of it. I
drank the thought of the element; I desired soul-nature pure and limpid.
When I saw the sparkling dew on the grass--a rainbow broken into
drops--it called up the same thought-prayer. The stormy wind whose
sudden twists laid the trees on the ground woke the same feeling; my
heart shouted with it. The soft summer air which entered when I opened
my window in the morning breathed the same sweet desire. At night,
before sleeping, I always looked out at the shadowy trees, the hills
looming indistinctly in the dark, a star seen between the drifting clouds;
prayer of soul-life always. I chose the highest room, bare and gaunt,
because as I sat at work I could look out and see more of the wide earth,
more of the dome of the sky, and could think my desire through these.
When the crescent of the new moon shone, all the old thoughts were
renewed.
All the succeeding incidents of the year repeated my prayer as I noted
them. The first green leaf on the hawthorn, the first spike of meadow
grass, the first song of the nightingale, the green ear of wheat. I spoke it
with the ear of wheat as the sun tinted it golden; with the whitening

barley; again with the red gold spots of autumn on the beech, the buff
oak leaves, and the gossamer dew-weighted. All the larks over the
green corn sang it for me, all the dear swallows; the green leaves
rustled it; the green brookflags waved it; the swallows took it with them
to repeat it for me in distant lands. By the running brook I meditated it;
a flash of sunlight here in the curve, a flicker yonderon the ripples, the
birds bathing in the sandy shallow, the rush of falling water. As the
brook ran winding through the meadow, so one thought ran winding
through my days.
The sciences I studied never checked it for a moment; nor did the books
of old philosophy. The sun was stronger than science; the hills more
than philosophy. Twice circumstances gave me a brief view of the sea
then the passion rose tumultuous as the waves. It was very bitter to me
to leave the sea.
Sometimes I spent the whole day walking over the hills searching for it;
as if the labour of walking would force it from the ground. I remained
in the woods for hours, among the ash sprays and the fluttering of the
ring-doves at their nests, the scent of pines here and there, dreaming my
prayer.
My work was most uncongenial and useless, but even then sometimes a
gleam of sunlight on the wall, the buzz of a bee at the window, would
bring the thought to me. Only to make me miserable, for it was a waste
of golden time while the rich sunlight streamed on hill and plain. There
was a wrenching of the mind, a straining of the mental sinews; I