I cross the town road
and climb the fence on the other side. I brush one shoulder among the
bushes as I pass: I feel the solid yet easy pressure of the sod. The
long blades of the timothy-grass clasp at my legs and let go with
reluctance. I break off a twig here and there and taste the tart or
bitter sap. I take off my hat and let the warm sun shine on my head. I
am an adventurer upon a new earth.
Is it not marvellous how far afield some of us are willing to travel in
pursuit of that beauty which we leave behind us at home? We mistake
unfamiliarity for beauty; we darken our perceptions with idle
foreignness. For want of that ardent inner curiosity which is the only
true foundation for the appreciation of beauty--for beauty is inward,
not outward--we find ourselves hastening from land to land, gathering
mere curious resemblances which, like unassimilated property, possess no
power of fecundation. With what pathetic diligence we collect peaks and
passes in Switzerland; how we come laden from England with vain
cathedrals!
Beauty? What is it but a new way of approach? For wilderness, for
foreignness, I have no need to go a mile: I have only to come up through
my thicket or cross my field from my own roadside--and behold, a new
heaven and a new earth!
Things grow old and stale, not because they are old, but because we
cease to see them.
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