Page:The clerk of the woods.djvu/168

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150
THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

who has eyes to enjoy it. Appreciation is ownership.

So you go on, pausing here and there to admire a lichen-covered boulder or stump (there is nothing prettier, look where you will), a cluster of ferns, a few sprouts of holly, a sprinkling of pyrola leaves (green with the greenness of all the summers of the world), or a bed of fruit-bespangled partridge-berry vine, till by and by you begin to feel the overshadowing, illusion-dispelling, soul-absorbing presence of the wood itself. The voice of eternity is speaking in the pine leaves. Your own identity slips away from you as you listen. You are part of the whole; nay, you are not so much a part of it as lost in it. The raindrop has fallen into the sea. For a moment you seem almost to divine a meaning in that bold, pantheistical, much neglected scripture, "That God may be all in all."

For a moment only. Then a cord snaps, and you come back to your puny self and its limitations. You are looking at this and that, just as before. A chickadee chirps, and you answer him. You are you again, a man