File:Under the trees (1902) (14781844642).jpg

Identifier: undertrees00mabi (find matches)
Title: Under the trees
Year: 1902 (1900s)
Authors: Mabie, Hamilton Wright, 1846-1916
Subjects: Natural history
Publisher: New York, Dodd, Mead and Co
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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n hfe of Nature crownsthe years in endless and inexhaustible pro-fusion. As it budded and opened into fullflower in the garden, how complete itseemed in itself, and how isolated from allother visible things! But in reality howdependent it was, how entirely the creationof forces as far apart as earth and sky!The great tide from the Unseen cast it fora moment into my possession ; for an hourit has tilled a human home with its far-brought sweetness; to-morrow it will fallapart and return whence it came. As Ilook into its heart of passionate colour,the whole visible universe, that seems sofixed and stable, becomes immaterial, evan-escent, vanishing; it is no longer a per-manent order of seas and continents androunded skies; it is a vision painted by anunseen hand against a background of mys-tery. Dead, cold, unchangeable as 1 seeit in the glimpses of a single hour, it be-comes warm, vital, forever changing as Igaze upon it from the outlook of the cen- . f m ij.\ h- ^^ ^^^^«f^0m4!ik \j^ I
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turies. It is the momentary creation offorces that stream through it in endlessebb and flow, that are to-day touching thesky with elusive splendour, and to-morrowspringing in changeful loveliness from thedepths of earth. The continents are trans-formed into the seas that encircle them;the seas rise into the skies that overarchthem; the skies mingle with the earth, andsend back from the uplifted faces of flowersgreetings to the stars they have deserted.Mountains rise and sink in the sublimerhythm to which the movement of theuniverse is set; that song without wordsstill audible in the sacred hour when themorning stars announce the day, andthe birds match their tiny melodies withthe universal harmony. In the unbroken vision of the centuriesall things are plastic and in motion; a di-vine energy surges through all; substantialfor a moment here as a rock, fragile andvanishing there as a flower; but every-where the same, and always sweeping on-ward through its illimitable channel to its56 ^

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