of the quiet sea quickens into rose, and soon the glittering serpentine
streaks of colour quiver into a blaze; the brown sands glow, and the
little waves run inward, showing milky curves under the gay light; the
shoregoing boats come home, and their sails--those coarse tanned
sails--are like flowers that wake with the daisies and the peonies to
feast on the sun. Happy holiday-makers who are wise enough to watch the
fishers come in! The booted thickly-clad fellows plunge into the shallow
water; and then the bare-footed women come down, and the harvest of the
night is carried up the cliffs before the most of the holiday-folk have
fairly awakened. The proud day broadens to its height, and the sands are
blackened by the growing crowd; for the beach near a fashionable
watering-place is like a section cut from a turbulent city street, save
that the folk on the sands think of aught but business. I have never
been able to sympathize with those who can perceive only vulgarity in a
seaside crowd. It is well to care for deserted shores and dark moaning
forests in the far North; but the average British holiday-maker is a
sociable creature; he likes to feel the sense of companionship, and his
spirits rise in proportion to the density of the crowd amid which he
disports himself. To me, the life, the concentrated enjoyment, the ways
of the children who are set free from the trammels of town life, are all
like so much poetry. I learned early to rejoice in silent sympathy with
the rejoicing of God's creatures. Only to watch the languid pose of some
steady toiler from the City is enough to give discontented people a
goodly lesson. The man has been ground in the mill for a year; his
modest life has left him no time for enjoyment, and his ideas of all
pleasure are crude. Watch him as he remains passively in an ecstasy of
rest. The cries of children, the confused jargon of the crowd, fall but
faintly on his nerves; he likes the sensation of being in company; he
has a dim notion of the beauty of the vast sky with its shining
snowy-bosomed clouds, and he lets the light breeze blow over him. I like
to look on that good citizen and contrast the dull round of his
wayfarings on many streets with the ease and satisfaction of his
attitude on the sands. Then the night comes. The dancers are busy, the
commonplace music is made refined by distance, and the murmur of the sea
gathers power over all other sounds, until the noon of night arrives and
the last merry voices are heard no more. Poor harmless revellers, so
condemned by men whose round of life is a search for pleasure! Many of
you do not understand or care for quiet refinements of dress and
demeanour; you lack restraint; but I have felt much gladness while
demurely watching your abandonment. I could draw rest for my soul from
the magnetic night long after you were aweary and asleep; but much of my
pleasure came as a reflection from yours.
As my memories of sweetness--yes, and of purifying sadness--gather more
thickly, I am minded to wonder that so much has been vouchsafed me
rather than to mourn over shadowy might-have-beens. The summer day by
the deep lovely lake--the lake within sound of the sea! All round the
steep walls that shut in the dark glossy water there hung rank festoons
and bosses of brilliant green, and the clear reflections of the weeds
and flowers hung so far down in the mysterious deeps that the height of
the rocky wall seemed stupendous. Far over in one tremendously deep
pool the lazy great fish wallowed and lunged; they would not show their
speckled sides very much until the evening; but they kept sleepily
moving all day, and sometimes a mighty back would show like a log for an
instant. In the morning the modest ground-larks cheeped softly among the
rough grasses on the low hills, while the proud heaven-scaler--the
lordly kinsman of the ground-lark--filled the sky with his lovely
clamour. Sometimes a water-rail would come out from the sedges and walk
on the surface of the lake as a tiny ostrich might on the shifting sand;
pretty creatures of all sorts seemed to find their homes near the deep
wonderful water, and the whole morning might be passed in silently
watching the birds and beasts that came around. The gay sun made streams
of silver fire shoot from the polished brackens and sorrel, the purple
geraniums gleamed like scattered jewels, and the birds seemed to be
joyful in presence of that manifold beauty--joyful as the quiet human
being who watched them all. And the little fishes in the shallows would
have their fun as well. They darted hither and thither; the spiny
creatures which the schoolboy loves built their queer nests among the
waterweeds; and sometimes a silly adventurer--alarmed by the majestic
approach of a large fish--would rush on to the loamy bank at the shallow
end of the lake and wriggle piteously in hopeless failure. The
afternoons were divinely restful by the varied shores of the limpid
lake. Sometimes as the sun sloped there might come hollow blasts of wind
that had careered for a brief space over the woods; but the brooding
heat, the mastering silence, the feeling that multifarious quiescent
living things were ready to start into action, all took the senses with
somnolence. That drowsy joy, that soothing silence which seemed only
intensified by the murmur of bees and the faint gurgle of water, were
like medicine to the soul; and it seemed that the conception of Nirvana
became easily understood as the delicious open-air reverie grew more and
more involved and vague. Then the last look of the sun, the creeping
shadows that made the sea gray and turned the little lake to an inky
hue, and then the slow fall of the quiet-coloured evening, and, last,
the fall of the mystic night!
Poor little birds, moving uneasily in the darkness, threw down tiny
fragments from the rocks, and each fragment fell with a sound like the
clink of a delicate silver bell; softly the sea moaned, softly the
night-wind blew, and softly--so softly!--came whispering the spirits of
the dead. Joyous faces could be seen by that lake long, long ago. In
summer, when the lower rim was all blazing with red and yellow flowers,
young lovers came to whisper and gaze. They are dead and gone. In
winter, when the tarn was covered with jetty glossy ice, there were
jovial scenes whereof the jollity was shared by a happy few. Round and
round on the glossy surface the skaters flew and passed like gliding
ghosts under the gloom of the rocks; the hiss of the iron sounded
musically, and the steep wall flung back sharp echoes of harmless
laughter. Each volume of sound was magically magnified, and the gay
company carried on their pleasant outing far into the chili winter
night. They are all gone! One was there oftenest in spring and summer,
and the last sun-rays often made her golden hair shine in splendour as
she stood gazing wistfully over the solemn lake. She saw wonders there
that coarser spirits could not know; and all her gentle musings passed
into poetry--poetry that was seldom spoken. Those who loved her never
cared to break her sacred stillness as she pondered by the side of the
beloved tarn; her language was not known to common folk, for she held
high converse with the great of old time; and, when she chanced to speak
with me, I understood but dimly, though I had all the sense of beauty
and mystery. A shipwrecked sailor said she looked as if she belonged to
God. Her Master claimed her early. Dear, your yellow hair will shine no
more in the sun that you loved; you have long given over your
day-dreams--and you are now dreamless. Or perhaps you dwell amid the
silent glory of one last long dream of those you loved. The gorse on the
moor moans by your grave, the brackens grow green and tall and wither
into dead gold year by year, the lake gleams gloomily in fitful flashes
amid its borders of splendour; and you rest softly while the sea calls
your lullaby nightly. Far off, far off, my soul, by quiet seas where the
lamps of the Southern Cross hang in the magnificence of the purple sky,
there is one who remembers the lake, and the glassy ice, and the blaze
of pompous summer, and the shining of that yellow hair. Peace--oh,
peace! The sorrow has passed into quiet pensive regret that is nigh akin
to gladness.
How many other ineffable days and nights have I known? All who can feel
the thrilling of sea-winds, all who can have even one day amid grass and
fair trees, grasp the time of delight, enjoy all beauties, do not pass
in coarseness one single minute; and then, when the Guide comes to point
your road through the strange gates, you may be like me--you may repine
at nothing, for you will have much good to remember and scanty evil. It
is good for me now to think of the thundering rush of the yacht as, with
the great mainsail drawing heavily, she roared through the field of foam
made by her own splendid speed, while the inky waves on the dim horizon
moaned and the dark summer midnight brooded warmly over the dark sea. It
is good to think of the strange days when the vessel was buried in
wreaths of dark cloud, and the rush of the wind only drove the haze
screaming among the shrouds. The vast dim mountains might not be
pleasant to the eye of either seaman or landsman; but, when they poured
their thundering deluge on a strong safe deck, we did not mind them.
Happy hearts were there even in stormy warring afternoons; and men
watched quite placidly as the long grim hills came gliding on. Then in
the evenings there were chance hours when the dim forecastle was a
pleasant place in bad weather. The bow of the vessel swayed wildly; the
pitching seemed as if it might end in one immense supreme dive to the
gulf, and the mad storming of the wind forced us to utter our simple
talk in loudest tones. Gruff kindly phrases, without much wit or point,
were good enough for us; perhaps even the appalling dignitary--yes, even
the mate--would crawl in; and we listened to lengthy disjointed stories.
And all the while the tremendous howl of the storm went on, and the
merry lads who went out on duty had to rush wildly so as to reach the
alley when a very heavy sea came over. The sense of strength was
supreme; the crash of the gale was nothing; and we rather hugged
ourselves on the notion that the fierce screaming meant us no harm. The
curls of smoke flitted softly amid the blurred yellow beams from the
lamp, and our chat went on while the monstrous billows grew blacker and
blacker and the spray shone like corpse-candles on the mystic and mighty
hills. And then the hours of the terrible darkness! To leave the swept
deck while every vein tingled with the ecstasy of the gale! The dull
warmth below was exquisite; the sly creatures which crept from their,
dens and let the lamplight shine on their weird eyes--even the gamesome
rats--had something merrily diabolic about them. Their thuds on the
floor, their sordid swarming, their inexplicable daring--all gave a kind
of minor current of _diablerie_ to the rush and hurry of the stormy
night; for they seemed to speak--and the creatures which on shore are
odious appeared to be quite in place in the soaring groaning vessel. Ah,
my brave forecastle lads, my merry tan-faced favourites, I shall no more
see your quaint squalor, I shall no more see your battle with wind and
savage waves and elemental turmoil! Some of you have passed to the
shadows before me; some of you have only the ooze for your graves; and
the others cannot ever hear my greeting again on the sweet mornings when
the waves are all gay with lily-hued blossoms of foam.
Pale beyond porch and portal,
Crowned with dark flowers she stands,
Who gathers all things mortal
With cold immortal hands.
Gathers! And Proserpina will strew the flowers of foam that I may never
see more--and then she will gather me.
All was good in the time of delight--all is good now that only a memory
clings lovingly to the heart. Take my counsel. Rejoice in your day, and
the night shall carry no dread for you.
_June, 1889._
_LOST DAYS._
I fully recognize the fact which the Frenchman flippantly stated--that
no human beings really believe that death is inevitable until the last
clasp of the stone-cold king numbs their pulses. Perhaps this
insensibility is a merciful gift; at any rate, it is a fact. If belief
came home with violence to our minds, we should suffer from a sort of
vertigo; but the merciful dullness which the Frenchman perceived and
mocked in his epigram saves us all the miseries of apprehension. This is
very curiously seen among soldiers when they know that they must soon go
into action. The soldiers chat together on the night before the attack;
they know that some of them must go down; they actually go so far as to
exchange messages thus--"If anything happens to me, you know, Bill, I
want you to take that to the old people. You give me a note or anything
else you have; and, if we get out of the shindy, we can hand the things
back again." After confidences of this sort, the men chat on; and I
never yet knew or heard of one who did not speak of his own safe return
as a matter of course. When a brigade charges, there may be a little
anxiety at first; but the whistle of the first bullet ends all
misgivings, and the fellows grow quite merry, though it may be that half
of them are certain to be down on the ground before the day is over. A
man who is struck may know well that he will pass away: but he will
rise up feebly to cheer on his comrades--nay, he will ask questions, as
the charging troops pass him, as to the fate of Bill or Joe, or the
probable action of the Heavies, or similar trifles.
In the fight of life we all behave much as the soldiers do in the crash
and hurry of battle. If we reason the matter out with a semblance of
logic, we all know that we must move toward the shadows; but, even after
we are mortally stricken by disease or age, we persist in acting and
thinking as if there were no end. In youth we go almost further; we are
too apt to live as though we were immortal, and as though there were
absolutely nothing to result from human action or human inaction. To the
young man and the young woman the future is not a blind lane with a
grave at the end; it is a spacious plain reaching away towards a far-off
horizon; and that horizon recedes and recedes as they move forward,
leaving magnificent expanses to be crossed in joyous freedom. A pretty
delusion! The youth harks onward, singing merrily and rejoicing in
sympathy with the mystic song of the birds; there is so much space
around him--the very breath of life is a joy--and he is content to taste
in glorious idleness the ecstasy of living. The evening closes in, and
then the horizon seems to be narrowing; like the walls of the deadly
chamber in the home of the Inquisition, the skies shrink inward--and the
youth has misgivings. The next day finds his plain shrunken a little in
expanse, and his horizon has not so superb a sweep. Nevertheless he goes
gaily on, and once more he raises his voice joyously, and tries to think
that the plain and the horizon can contract no more. Thus in foolish
hopefulness he passes his days until the glorious plain of his dreams
has been traversed, and, lo, under his very feet is the great gulf
fixed, and far below the tide--the tide of Eternity--laps sullenly
against the walls of the deadly chasm. If the youth knew that the gulf
and the rolling river were so near--if he not only knew, but could
absolutely picture his doom--would he be so merry? Ah, no!
I repeat that, if men could be so disciplined as to believe in their
souls that death must come, then there would be no lost days. Is there
one of us who can say that he never lost a day amid this too brief, too
joyous, too entrancing term of existence? Not one. The aged Roman--who,
by-the-way, was somewhat of a prig--used to go about moaning, "I have
lost a day," if he thought he had not performed some good action or
learned something in the twenty-four hours. Most of us have no such
qualms; we waste the time freely; and we never know that it is wasted
until with a dull shock we comprehend that all must be left and that the
squandered hours can never be retrieved. The men who are strongest and
greatest and best suffer the acutest remorse for the lost days; they
know their own powers, and that very knowledge makes them suffer all the
more bitterly when they reckon up what they might have done and compare
it with the sum of their actual achievement.
In a certain German town a little cell is shown on the walls of which a
famous name is marked many times. It appears that in his turbulent youth
Prince Bismarck was often a prisoner in this cell; and his various
appearances are registered under eleven different dates. Moreover, I
observe from the same rude register that he fought twenty-eight duels.
Lost days--lost days! He tells us how he drank in the usual insane
fashion prevalent among the students. He "cannot tell how much Burgundy
he could really drink." Lost days--lost days! And now the great old man,
with Europe at his feet and the world awaiting his lightest word with
eagerness, turns regretfully sometimes to think of the days thrown away.
A haze seems to hang before the eyes of such as he; and it is a haze
that makes the future seem dim and vast, even while it obscures all the
sharp outlines of things. The child is not capable of reasoning
coherently, and therefore its disposition to fritter away time must be
regarded as only the result of defective organization; but the young man
and young woman can reason, and yet we find them perpetually making
excuses for eluding time and eternity. Look at the young fellows who are
preparing for the hard duties of life by studying at a University. Here
is one who seems to have recognized the facts of existence; his hours
are arranged as methodically as his heart beats; he knows the exact
balance between physical and intellectual strength, and he overtaxes
neither, but body and mind are worked up to the highest attainable
pressure. No pleasures of the destructive sort call this youngster
aside; he has learned already what it is to reap the harvest of a quiet
eye, and his joys are of the sober kind. He rises early, and he has got
far through his work ere noon; his quiet afternoon is devoted to
harmless merriment in the cricket-field or on the friendly country
roads, and his evening is spent without any vain gossip in the happy
companionship of his books. That young man loses no day; but unhappily
he represents a type which is but too rare. The steady man, economic of
time, is a rarity; but the wild youth who is always going to do
something to-morrow is one of a class that numbers only too many on its
rolls. To-morrow! The young fellow passes to-day on the river, or spends
it in lounging or in active dissipation. He feels that he is doing
wrong; but the gaunt spectres raised by conscience are always exorcised
by the bright vision of to-morrow. To-morrow the truant will go to his
books; he will bend himself for that concentrated effort which alone
secures success, and his time of carelessness and sloth shall be far
left behind. But the sinister influence of to-day saps his will and
renders him infirm; each new to-day is wasted amid thoughts of visionary
to-morrows which take all the power from his soul; and, when he is
nerveless, powerless, tired, discontented with the very sight of the
sun, he finds suddenly that his feet are on the edge of the gulf, and he
knows that there will be no more to-morrows.
I am not entering a plea for hard, petrifying work. If a man is a
hand-worker or brain-worker, his fate is inevitable if he regards work
as the only end of life. The loss of which I speak is that incurred by
engaging in pursuits which do not give mental strength or resource or
bodily health. The hard-worked business-man who gallops twenty miles
after hounds before he settles to his long stretch of toil is not losing
his day; the empty young dandy whose life for five months in the year is
given up to galloping across grass country or lounging around stables is
decidedly a spendthrift so far as time is concerned.