The special mood or occasion of unaccustomed bitterness which
prompted this rhapsody has passed from memory beyond recall. The date
must be after his return from his second excursion to Fontainebleau.
_[Swanston, late Summer 1875] Thursday._
I have been staying in town, and could not write a word. It is a fine
strong night, full of wind; the trees are all crying out in the
darkness; funny to think of the birds asleep outside, on the tossing
branches, the little bright eyes closed, the brave wings folded, the
little hearts that beat so hard and thick (so much harder and thicker
than ever human heart) all stilled and quieted in deep slumber, in the
midst of this noise and turmoil. Why, it will be as much as I can do to
sleep in here in my walled room; so loud and jolly the wind sounds
through the open window. The unknown places of the night invite the
travelling fancy; I like to think of the sleeping towns and sleeping
farm-houses and cottages, all the world over, here by the white road
poplar-lined, there by the clamorous surf. Isn't that a good dormitive?
_Saturday._--I cannot tell how I feel, who can ever? I feel like a
person in a novel of George Sand's; I feel I desire to go out of the
house, and begin life anew in the cool blue night; never to come back
here; never, never. Only to go on for ever by sunny day and grey day, by
bright night and foul, by high-way and by-way, town and hamlet, until
somewhere by a road-side or in some clean inn clean death opened his
arms to me and took me to his quiet heart for ever. If soon, good; if
late, well then, late--there would be many a long bright mile behind me,
many a goodly, many a serious sight; I should die ripe and perfect, and
take my garnered experience with me into the cool, sweet earth. For I
have died already and survived a death; I have seen the grass grow
rankly on my grave; I have heard the train of mourners come weeping and
go laughing away again. And when I was alone there in the kirk-yard, and
the birds began to grow familiar with the grave-stone, I have begun to
laugh also, and laughed and laughed until night-flowers came out above
me. I have survived myself, and somehow live on, a curious changeling, a
merry ghost; and do not mind living on, finding it not unpleasant; only
had rather, a thousandfold, died and been done with the whole damned
show for ever. It is a strange feeling at first to survive yourself, but
one gets used to that as to most things. _Et puis_, is it not one's own
fault? Why did not one lie still in the grave? Why rise again among
men's troubles and toils, where the wicked wag their shock beards and
hound the weary out to labour? When I was safe in prison, and stone
walls and iron bars were an hermitage about me, who told me to burst the
mild constraint and go forth where the sun dazzles, and the wind
pierces, and the loud world sounds and jangles all through the weary
day? I mind an old print of a hermit coming out of a great wood towards
evening and shading his bleared eyes to see all the kingdoms of the
earth before his feet, where towered cities and castled hills, and
stately rivers, and good corn lands made one great chorus of temptation
for his weak spirit, and I think I am the hermit, and would to God I had
dwelt ever in the wood of penitence[20]----