Under the Trees and Elsewhere | Page 9

our
mechanisms; it is this inexhaustible life, overflowing in
unconsciousness and boundless fulness, that she forever reveals. The
truth which underlies these two great facts needs no application to
human life. Blessed, indeed, are they who live in it, and have caught
from it something of the joy, the health, and the perennial beauty of
Nature.
Chapter VI
Earth and Sky
In nature, as in art, it is the sky which makes the landscape. Given the
identical fields, woods, and retreating hills, and every change of sky,
every modulation of light, will produce a new landscape; in light and
atmosphere are concealed those mysteries of colour, of distance, and of
tone which clothe the changeless features of the visible world with
infinite variety and charm. This fruitful marriage of the upper and the
lower firmaments is perhaps the oldest fact known to men; it was the
earliest discovery of the first observer, it still is the most illusive and
beautiful mystery in nature. The most ancient mythologies began with
it, the latest books of science and natural observation are still dealing
with it. Myths that are older than history portray it in lofty symbolism
or in splendid histories that embody the primitive ideals of divinity and

humanity; the latest poets and painters would fain touch their verse or
their canvas with some luminous gleam from the heart of this perpetual
miracle. The unbroken procession of the seasons changes month by
month the relations of earth and sky; day and night all the
water-courses of the world rise in invisible moisture to a fellowship
with the birds that have passed on swift wing above their currents; the
great outlying seas, that sound the notes of their vast and passionate
unrest upon the shores of every continent, are continually drawn
upward to swell the invisible upper ocean which, out of its mighty life,
feeds every green and fruitful thing upon the bosom of the earth. This
movement of the oceans upon the continents through the illimitable
channels of the sky is, in some ways, the most mysterious and the most
sublime of those miracles which each day testify to the presence and
majesty of that Spirit behind Nature of whom the greatest of modern
poets thought when he wrote:
Thus at the roaring loom of time I ply And weave for God the robe
thou seest Him by.
The vast inland grain fields, that stretch in unbroken procession from
horizon to horizon, have the seas at their roots not less truly than the
fertile soil out of which they spring; the verdure upon the mountain
ranges, that keep unbroken solitude at the heart of the continents,
speaks forever of the distant oceans which nourish it, and spread it like
a vesture over the barren heights. No traveller, deep in the recesses of
the remotest inland, ever passes beyond the voice of that encircling
ocean which never died out of the ears of the ancient Ulysses in the
first Odyssey of wandering.
Two months ago the apple trees were white with the foam of the upper
sea; to-day the roses have brought into my little patch of garden the
hues with which sun and sea proclaimed their everlasting marriage in
the twilight of yester even. In the deep, passionate heart of these
splendid flowers, fragrant since they bloomed in Sappho's hand
centuries ago, this sublime wedlock is annually celebrated; earth and
sky meet and commingle in this miracle of colour and sweetness, and
when I carry this lovely flower into my study all the poets fall silent;

here is a depth of life, a radiant outcome from the heart of mysteries, a
hint of unimagined beauty, such as they have never brought to me in all
their seeking. They have had their visions and made them music; they
have caught faint echoes of rushing seas and falling tides; the shadows
of mountains have fallen upon them with low whisperings of
unspeakable things hidden in the unexplored recesses of their solitudes;
they have searched the limitless arch of heaven when it was sown with
stars, and glittered like "an archangel full panoplied against a battle
day;" but in all their quest the sublime unity of Nature, the fellowship
of force with force, of sea with sky, of moisture with light, of form with
colour, has found at their hands no such transcendent demonstration as
this fragile rose, which to-night brings from the great temple to this
little shrine the perfume and the royalty of obedience to the highest
laws, and reverence for the divinest mysteries. Here sky and earth and
sea meet in a union which no science can dissolve, because God has
joined them together. Could I but penetrate the mystery which lies at
the heart of this fragile flower, I should possess the secret