_Amice, quisquis es, dummodo honestum, vitae taedet_.
* * * * *
THE road was parched and burning. I was sad, so sad, at my heart’s
heart. The sun seemed to laugh me to scorn, and the passers to sneer as
they went by. My soul was sore, sore to its inmost fibres, and I hated
the very beauty of Nature.
* * * * *
So I turned aside among the cypresses. They will calm me, I thought.
Their whisperings are so grave. They flaunt not their joy at the sun’s
kisses, like the shameless trees along the roadside. They keep their
hearts unmoved in sun and in storm; they are the true stoics of Nature.
And their calm is sympathetic; it comes not of a soul immovable; it
comes of strength in trial.
And the cypresses wrapped me round in their scent—the grave,
penetrating odour in which the battered spirit folds its wings to rest,
and the heart-beats grow quieter, and the brow smooths itself out in
peace. In long, long lines they stretched away before me, and I walked
under their guidance, conversing with them familiarly, searching the
height and depth of their thoughts. And I was no longer sore with my
fellow-men. I could tolerate the thought of the flaunting trees and
flowers, of the exuberant life evermore renewing itself away out there
along the road I had left. But still I walked among the cypresses, and
with them I held communion.
* * * * *
And lo! they took leave of me. At the edge of a grassy path they left
me. And beyond the path I saw freshly-ploughed brown earth, and the
quiver and strain of a yoke of white oxen as they pulled the plough
through some harder spot; and two workers with brown aprons, arms and
faces like glowing bronze, and soft felt hats weather-stained into
harmony with the earth and the tree-trunks. They bent to their labour;
and the soil laid bare its breast, rich in promise, before their eyes;
and the vines around whose roots the plough passed encompassed them
with luxuriant clusters, purple and white; and the olives bent close
down around their heads, embowering them under a low roof of silver.
So I passed through the toil of those workers, toil calm and regular,
blest in its fulfilling and in its ending; and I carried in my heart
the picture of those bending men, the slow-moving oxen, the rich soil
and the embracing trees.
* * * * *
Suddenly a spell was woven round me; a spell as of moonbeams. I was
in a wood of olive trees. Their sharp, narrow leaves, of a sheen like
frosted silver, pointed with rigid grace into the luminous grey of
the sky. No shadow, no darker spot of black or green fruit broke the
wondrous diffused splendour. The very branches, as they spread and bent
outwards from the low trunks, had softened the harshness of their scaly
bark and were as softly radiant as the foliage and the sky above them.
Only the trunks and the under-sides of the branches were in shadow;
rugged and brown, they were like a rough shell which had opened to give
life to an Aphrodite of new and chastened beauty. No flowers jarred
with bright tints the harmonious hush of colour; but here and there
delicate campions raised slender stems that bent with the weight of
grey-green calyx and pallid, wide-eyed blossom.
And I walked, in the exquisite suavity of the wood. Surely, I thought,
the moonbeams have become tangible. Surely I am in an enchanted land
and should meet its mistress; a maiden slim and grave, with wealth
of olive-black hair, with deep dark eyes, with clinging gown of grey
girdled with a zone of cold blue-green. How sweet to stay here for ever
with soul attuned to the melody that mutely breathes from the living
silver of boughs and leaves, and falls graciously from the pearl-like
sky.
But onward and ever onward must I go; and the olives left me as the
cypresses had done.
* * * * *
They left me at the edge of the highway; and I passed out again into
the glare of the sunshine, the gaze of the passers, the laughter, the
bustle, the pushing, on the parched and burning road.
And behold! a change had come over my soul. The stoicism of the
cypresses, the calm of the toilers, the suave quiet strength of that
harmonious olive wood—these things had permeated the fibres of my
being. The indifference of the passers-by found no way open to my
heart; the unheeding joy of trees and flowers no longer jarred me. I
was clothed upon with a vesture woven of the enduring calm that broods
ever at the unchanging heart of Nature; like armour it encompassed me
about, and I possessed my soul in peace.