Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/124



VEN to one who loves her and accepts the rigor of her economy as part of her lasting reward, nature is not everywhere in a communicable mood, nor is she always the same. Her disposition often changes with our own; her appeal seldom reaches the discordant heart. Her inner voice is never heard by the passing stranger. To say that we love nature only when we take the pains to understand her, is trite; but we can only partly understand her when we suffer her to impose upon us her supreme will. She unveils for those who linger and wait; and she speaks only to him who stands in reverence before a moss or a fern as before the greatest of the mysteries of the universe. A bird is singing in the branches of a hemlock; a worm is eating into its bark. The ranger passes by indifferent to both, nothing seeing or hearing. But the poet-naturalist lingers,