I had intended going doggedly on this morning with the list of our
seed-sowings, but another impulse has come, and the sowings must stand
over for the moment. Something in the look of to-day’s sky and earth--a
brand new earth after last night’s rain--has brought a new, and a most
unlooked-for wave of exhilaration to my mental shores, and the
visitation is just now too rare and comforting not to be met half way
with the keenest of hospitality.
“Life is a flux of moods,” and to the fluctuations of those moods there
is assuredly no limit. If we are eternally surprised by our own
limitations, our own torpidity and dullness, there are also--and for
this heaven be thanked--some possibilities of surprise upon the other
side, and that for the oldest, the saddest, the least alert amongst us.
A hundred hours of intolerable dullness and stagnation pass over our
heads. Then comes the hundred and first, and lo! the dull brain wakes,
and the deaf ear hears. A new perception of the unperceived relationship
of things; a new perception of the invisible splendours lying unnoticed
around us, becomes for the moment almost startlingly visible. Such hours
are the only really countable ones, the chief solace of existence, the
one clear reason, one is tempted to say, of our poor encumbered, stunted
little lives. For their sakes, if for no other reason, it were well
worth the trouble of being born, and of all the aches and ills that
belong to that very singular estate; worth our meeting gallantly, if
possible merrily, the thousand petty pinpricks, the slings and arrows of
outrageous fortune, the occasional alienation of those one loves best,
nay--if it must be so--even the fell assaults of Giant Despair and all
his abominable brood.
For the suggestiveness of what lies about us is no mere fancy, but is
absolutely real; real as the light upon yonder tree-tops; real as the
sorrow in our hearts; real as the love that makes all things endurable;
real as the death which puts an end to pain. At this very moment, now
passing over my head, there is lying about me--close to my eyes, could I
but discern it--the materials alike of the loftiest poetry, and of the
most riddle-solving science. Disregarded and unheeded there they lie,
ready alike for the greatest singer in his happiest mood, for the most
era-making of discoverers, nay, for aught I can tell to the contrary,
for the seer, the saint, and the prophet in their hours of highest, and
most God-inspired contemplation.
For the raw materials of inspiration are eternally at hand, only
invisibly. They are as present here this morning as they ever were;
present in the earth and its green things; in the common face of day; in
the comings and goings of the clouds, and of men; in the changes of the
sky, and of our own poor lives. The light that is gilding yonder cumulus
is as capable of inspiring great thoughts here to-day in a Surrey copse,
as ever it was in Delphi, or in Argos, or in Jerusalem. It may awaken
just as resounding emotions, it may inspire just as great deeds to the
hearts of yonder passers-by in a dogcart, as it did to the Assailants of
Troy, or to the Seekers of the Golden Fleece. The constituents of all
greatness, of all poetry, heroism, and sanctity are for ever amongst us.
It is only the right recipients of them that are alas! so scanty.
And yet, even though we are not quite the right recipients, it is well
for us that such gleams come. Who shall say that an existence which is
capable of being even thus temporarily lifted above itself is not for
that very reason a goodly and a desirable one? What proportion of
discomfort, what proportion even of sheer pain, of numbing weakness, of
crushing sorrow were not worth enduring so long as one knew--knew as a
matter of absolute certainty--that they would be now and again pierced
by gleams of such celestial potency? The hard thing, and the thing that
for all mortals will always be hardest to bear patiently, is--not the
uncertainty even--so much as the desperate transitoriness of such
visitations. Almost before we have time to see and to confer with them,
our enchanting visitors have spread out their gauzy wings, and have
vanished beyond recall. They are gone, but where they are gone to, or
when they will next revisit us we have not the faintest notion. Ariel
and Titania have disappeared into the abyss, but Caliban and Bottom on
the contrary remain permanently behind, and are continually at our
elbows. At this very moment, and while I am still thinking about it, the
light is shifting rapidly. The day has grown older; more crowded. A
thousand bloated nothings have sprung up like so many fungi in the path.
Shadows, slight, but impenetrable, have gathered over the foreground. My
own mood too has shifted, and what a while ago seemed so clear has grown
fainter and fainter, and seems to be upon the point of disappearing
altogether. The good little hour has passed!