Page:Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881).djvu/298

284 feel that I need to sit in a far-away cave through a three weeks' storm, cold and wet, to give a tone to my system. The spring has its windy March to usher it in, with many soaking rains reaching into April.

Methinks I would share every creature's suffering for the sake of its experience and joy. The song-sparrow and the transient fox-colored sparrow, have they brought me no message this year? Is not the coming of the fox-colored sparrow something more earnest and significant than I have dreamed of? Have I heard what this tiny passenger has to say while it flits thus from tree to tree? Can I forgive myself if I let it go to Rupert's Land before I have appreciated it? God did not make this world in jest, no, nor in indifference. These migratory sparrows all bear messages that concern my life. I do not pluck the fruits in their season. I love the birds and beasts because they are mythologically in earnest. I see that the sparrow cheeps, and flits, and sings adequately to the great design of the universe, that man does not communicate with it, understand its language, because he is not at one with nature. I reproach myself because I have regarded with indifference the passage of the birds, I have thought them no better than I.

What philosopher can estimate the different values of a waking thought and a dream?