I loitered about in my chalk-pit for a while; noted a new flower that sprinkled the high grassy ledges that I had never seen there before; and then sate down in a little dingle that commanded a wide view of the fen.  The landscape to-day was dark with a sort of indigo-blue shadows; the clouds above big and threatening, as though they were nursing the thunder—­the distance veiled in a blue-grey haze.  Field after field, with here and there a clump of trees, ran out to the far horizon.  A partridge chirred softly in the pastures up above me, and a wild screaming of sparrows came at intervals from a thorn-thicket, where they seemed to be holding a fierce and disorderly meeting.

I should like to be able to recover the thread of my thoughts in that quiet grassy place, because they ran on with an equable sparkle, quite without cause or reason.  I had nothing particularly pleasing to think about; but the mood of retrospect and anticipation seemed to ramble about, picking sweet-smelling flowers from the past and future alike.  I seemed to desire nothing and to regret nothing.  My cup was full of a pleasant beverage, neither cloying nor intoxicating, and the glad spring-time tempered it nicely to my taste.  There seemed to brood in the air a quiet benevolence as of a Father watching His myriad children at play; and yet as I saw a big blackbird, with a solemn eye, hop round a thorn-bush with a writhing worm festooned round his beak, I realised that the play was a deadly tragedy to some of the actors.  I suppose that such thoughts ought to have ruffled the tranquil mood, but they did not, for the whole seemed so complete.  I suppose that man walks in a vain shadow; but to-day it only seemed that he disquiets himself in vain.  And it was not a merely selfish hedonism that thrilled me, for a large part of my joy was that we all seemed to rejoice together.  As far as the eye could see, and for miles and miles, the flowers were turning their fragrant heads to the light, and the birds singing clear.  And I rejoiced with them too, and shared my joy with all the brave world.

LVIII

One of the most impressive passages in Wordsworth’s poems describes how he rowed by night, as a boy, upon Esthwaite Lake, and experienced a sense of awestruck horror at the sight of a dark peak, travelling, as the boat moved, beyond and across the lower and nearer slopes, seeming to watch and observe the boy.  Of course it may be said that such a feeling is essentially subjective, and that the peak was but obeying natural and optical laws, and had no concern whatever with the boy.  That there should be any connection between the child and the bleak mountains is, of course, inconsistent with scientific laws.  But to arrive at a scientific knowledge of nature is not at all the same thing as arriving at the truth about her; one may analyse everything, peak and lake and moonlight alike, into its component elements, and show that it is all matter animated and sustained by certain forces.  But one has got no nearer to knowing what matter or force is, or how they came into being.