II

THIS garden is an epitome of peace; sun and wind, rain, flowers, and

birds gather me into the blessedness of their active harmony. The world

holds no wish for me, now that I have come home to die with my own

people, for verily I think that the sap of grass and trees must run in

my veins, so steady is their pull upon my heart-strings. London claimed

all my philosophy, but the country gives all, and asks of me only the

warm receptivity of a child in its mother's arms.

When I lie in my cool light room on the garden level, I look across the

bright grass--_il verde smalto_--to a great red rose bush in lavish

disarray against the dark cypress. Near by, amid a tangle of many-hued

corn-flowers I see the promise of coming lilies, the sudden crimson of

a solitary pæony; and in lowlier state against the poor parched earth

glow the golden cups of the eschscholtzias. Beyond the low hedge lies

pasture bright with buttercups, where the cattle feed. Farther off,

where the scythe has been busy, are sheep, clean and shorn, with merry,

well-grown lambs; and in the farthest field I can see the great horses

moving in slow steady pace as the farmer turns his furrow.

[Illustration: The great horses moving in slow steady pace as the

farmer turns his furrow]

The birds are noisy comrades and old friends, from the lark which

chants the dew-steeped morning, to the nightingale that breaks the

silence of the most wonderful nights. I hear the wisdom of the rooks in

the great elms; the lifting lilt of the linnet, and the robin's quaint

little summer song. The starlings chatter ceaselessly, their queer

strident voices harsh against the melodious gossip of the other birds;

the martins shrill softly as they swoop to and fro busied with their

nesting under the eaves; thrush and blackbird vie in friendly rivalry

like the Meister-singer of old; sometimes I hear the drawling cry of a

peacock strayed from the great house, or the laugh of the woodpecker;

and at night the hunting note of the owl reaches me as he sweeps by in

search of prey.

To-day I am out again; and the great sycamore showers honey and flowers

on me as I lie beneath it. Sometimes a bee falls like an over-ripe

fruit, and waits awhile to clean his pollen-coated legs ere he flies

home to discharge his burden. He is too busy to be friendly, but his

great velvety cousin is much more sociable, and stays for a gentle

rub between his noisy shimmering wings, and a nap in the hollow of my

hand, for he is an idle friendly soul with plenty of time at his own

disposal and no responsibilities. Looking across I can watch the

martins at work; they have a starling and a sparrow for near neighbours

in the wooden gutter. One nest is already complete all but the coping,

the other two are a-building: I wonder whether I or they will be first

to go south through the mist.

This great tree is a world in itself, and the denizens appear full of

curiosity as to the Gulliver who has taken up his abode beneath it.

Pale green caterpillars and spiders of all sizes come spinning down to

visit me, and have to be persuaded with infinite difficulty to ascend

their threads again. There are flies with beautiful iridescent wings,

beetles of all shapes, some of them like tiny jewels in the sunlight.

Their nomenclature is a sealed book to me; of their life and habits

I know nothing; yet this is but a little corner of the cosmos I am

leaving, and I feel not so much desire for the beauty to come, as a

great longing to open my eyes a little wider during the time which

remains to me in this beautiful world of God's making, where each

moment tells its own tale of active, progressive life in which there is

no undoing. Nature knows naught of the web of Penelope, that acme of

anxious pathetic waiting, but goes steadily on in ever widening circle

towards the fulfilment of the mystery of God.

There are, I take it, two master-keys to the secrets of the universe,

viewed _sub specie æternitatis_, the Incarnation of God, and the

Personality of Man; with these it is true for us as for the pantheistic

little man of contemptible speech, that "all things are ours," yea,

even unto the third heaven.

[Illustration: There is a place waiting for me under the firs in the

quiet churchyard]

I have lost my voracious appetite for books; their language is less

plain than scent and song and the wind in the trees; and for me the

clue to the next world lies in the wisdom of earth rather than in the

learning of men. "_Libera me ab fuscina Hophni_," prayed the good

Bishop fearful of religious greed. I know too much, not too little;

it is realisation that I lack, wherefore I desire these last days to

confirm in myself the sustaining goodness of God, the love which is our

continuing city, the New Jerusalem whose length, breadth, and height

are all one. It is a time of exceeding peace. There is a place waiting

for me under the firs in the quiet churchyard; thanks to my poverty I

have no worldly anxieties or personal dispositions; and I am rich in

friends, many of them unknown to me, who lavishly supply my needs and

make it ideal to live on the charity of one's fellow-men. I am most

gladly in debt to all the world; and to Earth, my mother, for her great

beauty.

I can never remember the time when I did not love her, this mother of

mine with her wonderful garments and ordered loveliness, her tender

care and patient bearing of man's burden. In the earliest days of my

lonely childhood I used to lie chin on hand amid the milkmaids, red

sorrel, and heavy spear-grass listening to her many voices, and above

all to the voice of the little brook which ran through the meadows

where I used to play: I think it has run through my whole life also, to

lose itself at last, not in the great sea but in the river that maketh

glad the City of God. Valley and plain, mountain and fruitful field;

the lark's song and the speedwell in the grass; surely a man need not

sigh for greater loveliness until he has read something more of this

living letter, and knelt before that earth of which he is the only

confusion.

It is a grave matter that the word religion holds such sway among us,

making the very gap seem to yawn again which the Incarnation once and

for ever filled full. We have banished the protecting gods that ruled

in river and mountain, tree and grove; we have gainsayed for the most

part folk-lore and myth, superstition and fairy-tale, evil only in

their abuse. We have done away with mystery, or named it deceit. All

this we have done in an enlightened age, but despite this policy of

destruction we have left ourselves a belief, the grandest and most

simple the world has ever known, which sanctifies the water that is

shed by every passing cloud; and gathers up in its great central act

vineyard and cornfield, proclaiming them to be that Life of the world

without which a man is dead while he liveth. Further, it is a belief

whose foundations are the most heavenly mystery of the Trinity, but

whose centre is a little Child: it sets a price upon the head of the

sparrow, and reckons the riches of this world at their true value;

it points to a way of holiness where the fool shall not err, and the

sage may find the realisation of his far-seeking; and yet, despite

its inclusiveness, it is a belief which cannot save the birds from

destruction, the silent mountains from advertisement, or the stream

from pollution, in an avowedly Christian land. John Ruskin scolded

and fought and did yeoman service, somewhat hindered by his over-good

conceit of himself; but it is not the worship of beauty we need so

much as the beauty of holiness. Little by little the barrier grows and

'religion' becomes a _rule_ of life, not life itself, although the

Bride stands ready to interpret, likened in her loveliness to the chief

treasures of her handmaid--Earth. There is more truth in the believing

cry, "Come from thy white cliffs, O Pan!" than in the religion that

measures a man's life by the letter of the Ten Commandments, and erects

itself as judge and ruler over him, instead of throwing open the gate

of the garden where God walks with man from morning until morning.

As I write the sun is setting; in the pale radiance of the sky above

his glory there dawns the evening star; and earth like a tired child

turns her face to the bosom of the night.