So came August to its close, ending its last day with a night so
luminous and still that a mood came over me to sleep out on the open
beach under the stars. There are nights in summer when darkness and
ebbing tide quiet the universal wind, and this August night was full
of that quiet of absence, and the sky was clear. South of my house,
between the bold fan of a dune and the wall of a plateau, a sheltered
hollow opens seaward, and to this nook I went, shouldering my blankets
sailorwise. In the star-shine the hollow was darker than the immense
and solitary beach, and its floor was still pleasantly warm with the
overflow of day.
I fell asleep uneasily, and woke again as one wakes out-of-doors. The
vague walls about me breathed a pleasant smell of sand, there was
no sound, and the broken circle of grass above was as motionless as
something in a house. Waking again, hours afterward, I felt the air
grown colder and heard a little advancing noise of waves. It was still
night. Sleep gone and past recapture, I drew on my clothes and went to
the beach. In the luminous east, two great stars aslant were rising
clear of the exhalations of darkness gathered at the rim of night and
ocean--Betelgeuse and Bellatrix, the shoulders of Orion. Autumn had
come, and the Giant stood again at the horizon of day and the ebbing
year, his belt still hidden in the bank of cloud, his feet in the deeps
of space and the far surges of the sea.
[Illustration: _The Fo’castle_]
My year upon the beach had come full circle; it was time to close
my door. Seeing the great suns, I thought of the last time I marked
them in the spring, in the April west above the moors, dying into the
light and sinking. I saw them of old above the iron waves of black
December, sparkling afar. Now, once again, the Hunter rose to drive
summer south before him, once again autumn followed on his steps. I had
seen the ritual of the sun; I had shared the elemental world. Wraiths
of memories began to take shape. I saw the sleet of the great storm
slanting down again into the grass under the thin seepage of moon, the
blue-white spill of an immense billow on the outer bar, the swans in
the high October sky, the sunset madness and splendour of the year’s
terns over the dunes, the clouds of beach birds arriving, the eagle
solitary in the blue. And because I had known this outer and secret
world, and been able to live as I had lived, reverence and gratitude
greater and deeper than ever possessed me, sweeping every emotion else
aside, and space and silence an instant closed together over life. Then
time gathered again like a cloud, and presently the stars began to pale
over an ocean still dark with remembered night.
During the months that have passed since that September morning some
have asked me what understanding of Nature one shapes from so strange
a year? I would answer that one’s first appreciation is a sense that
the creation is still going on, that the creative forces are as great
and as active to-day as they have ever been, and that to-morrow’s
morning will be as heroic as any of the world. _Creation is here and
now._ So near is man to the creative pageant, so much a part is he of
the endless and incredible experiment, that any glimpse he may have
will be but the revelation of a moment, a solitary note heard in a
symphony thundering through debatable existences of time. Poetry is
as necessary to comprehension as science. It is as impossible to live
without reverence as it is without joy.
[Illustration: _Sunrise from Cape Cod_]
And what of Nature itself, you say--that callous and cruel engine,
red in tooth and fang? Well, it is not so much of an engine as you
think. As for “red in tooth and fang,” whenever I hear the phrase or
its intellectual echoes I know that some passer-by has been getting
life from books. It is true that there are grim arrangements. Beware
of judging them by whatever human values are in style. As well expect
Nature to answer to your human values as to come into your house and
sit in a chair. The economy of nature, its checks and balances, its
measurements of competing life--all this is its great marvel and has
an ethic of its own. Live in Nature, and you will soon see that for
all its non-human rhythm, it is no cave of pain. As I write I think
of my beloved birds of the great beach, and of their beauty and their
zest of living. And if there are fears, know also that Nature has its
unexpected and unappreciated mercies.
Whatever attitude to human existence you fashion for yourself, know
that it is valid only if it be the shadow of an attitude to Nature.
A human life, so often likened to a spectacle upon a stage, is more
justly a ritual. The ancient values of dignity, beauty, and poetry
which sustain it are of Nature’s inspiration; they are born of the
mystery and beauty of the world. Do no dishonour to the earth lest you
dishonour the spirit of man. Hold your hands out over the earth as over
a flame. To all who love her, who open to her the doors of their veins,
she gives of her strength, sustaining them with her own measureless
tremor of dark life. Touch the earth, love the earth, honour the earth,
her plains, her valleys, her hills, and her seas; rest your spirit in
her solitary places. For the gifts of life are the earth’s and they are
given to all, and they are the songs of birds at daybreak, Orion and
the Bear, and dawn seen over ocean from the beach.