They skirt the wood, and narrowly inspect the dewy grass, to find new
foot-prints of beast or heavy bird, seeking, with returning light, their
accustomed food. No fairy ring, no shape of naiad or of dryad, no gnome,
no sprite, met their pure vision, to turn them from their way; for not
yet had the mind of man built up a superstition unto itself, and peopled
the clefts of the earth, the water, and the air, giving to nothingness
forms innumerable. Truth was too near and palpable, to be lost in
imagination; to be moulded and cast anew, so changed as not to know
itself; and poetry, the juggler and soul’s cheat, lay hid in matter,
where God placed it, to be drawn thence for other purposes than those of
error. It was not until man forgot his origin, that he sought out a new
creator, even Beauty, the prime element in all God’s works, and so
wrought with it, as to give strange life to all that is, and is not.
The wily hunters, skilled in their life’s trade, turn on every side,
observe the lower boughs, fresh cropped, imitate the call of birds, the
cry of deer, peer through the thick underwood which stood here and there
in clumps, and plunged into the forest upon a trail which promised
success.