Was ich besitze, seh’ ich wie im Weiten,
Und was verschwand, wird mir zu Wirklichkeiten.
What I possess, I see far distant lying,
And what I lost, grows real and undying.
GOETHE, FAUST.
In the hearts of most of us there is always a desire for
something beyond experience. Hardly any of us but have
thought, Some day I will go on a long voyage; but the years
go by and still we have not sailed.
—RICHARD JEFFERIES, THE OPEN AIR.
ONCE more the spring, the sunshine, and the youth of the year. As much
of contentment, perhaps, as the majority may find within the confines of
brick and stone my house has yielded me throughout the long months of
winter. Grateful I am for the comfort it has afforded—its warmth, its
luxury, its cheer. Yet ever with the return of spring and the song of
birds, the house becomes merely secondary to the grounds, the garden,
and the charms of external nature.
Again I lounge on the grass-plot overlooking the river. Once more I
watch the sparkle of the water and inhale the scent of the wild
honeysuckle, sentient with the sweet breath of the summer. The bees hum,
the wood-dove calls, the soothing roar of the rapids rises and falls.
Again, through the morning haze, I note the pleasure craft idling on the
breast of the river; while yonder, her painted canvas unfurled, a
strange craft is slowly rounding a curve of the shore.
Did I say my ship had come? Alas! the wood-dove only murmured in his
dream, and my ship sailed past to deposit her precious stores at the
harbor of my more fortunate neighbor.
My ship was, after all, only one of the castles in Spain that we are
always building—and “these are but my fantasies.”
[Illustration]
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● Transcriber’s Notes:
○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.
○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only
when a predominant form was found in this book.
○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).