The Harvest of a Quiet Eye

e. Wide flush the fields; the softening air is balm; Echo the mountain

ife, there was not reflection enough to allow of deliberate and actual enjoyment of its hilarity and lightness of heart. It welled up bubbling and singing with the gladness of a spring, that yet is glad only because it is glad, and not because it is pure and bright. For it knows not yet of aught that is muddy

ear to call to mind those old pure, careless days-except for that first impetus and rush, I suppose it is more an absence of something than a presence of aught, that makes the child's heart so glad. Anxious thought for soul and body of self and others; disappointment, regret, estrangements, remorse, satiety, failing power

ones, and threes, the white discs and yellow cups struggle out of the little space that the finger and thumb cannot quite close in. You very soon get to slight these humble flowers; and, losing your easy content, aim45 higher, even at cowslips, primroses, and her

ntil the winner of the race caught sight of that fair meadow. Through the white wicket-gate then, the hoop thrown aside into the yielding grass, and the three pairs of little hands were busy enough soon. At first, the aim was merely to pick what came to hand, and quantity, not quality, was in demand. But, so soon do we begin to undervalue that which is abundant for that which is less easily attained, in a little while we were busy after rarities; mere white daisies were passed over, and those with a "crimson head" were sought; also, I remem

ould eagerly part the crowding leaves and the binding ivy-nets that hid them. Not much fear lest we should gather enough of them to risk dropping any from an over-filled hand.47 Still, we mostly went home well content, with a close-clipped neat dark-blue bunch in one hand, with here and there a pure white prize, or a large one merely purple tinge

snapped, without that drawback which I deplore in primroses-the long sinew that a hasty picking leaves behind, to the marring of the flower. Baskets we had, trowels in them, to collect some roots for the misused pieces of ground k

and large, when we got home; next, to make cowslip tea. There is, or was, a keen delight in the former of these pursuits. The excitement and delight of the first cowslip ball made is feverish and unsettling. The long, tight string upon which are hung the poor flowers with their tails pinched off; the filling that string, the tying it, with here and there a cowslip tumbling out; and then the playing with the sweet-scented soft toy, till the room is littered with its scattered wealth, these are things to remember even now. But, no doubt, the great thing was the cowslip tea-allowed to us that night instead of milk-and-water; and to be drunk in real teac

e; and here and there a pale green orchis, coming out of its two ribbed leaves, valued because rarer than its purple brother, that but rarely yet towered with its tall rich spike above the clustering milky flowers. And on one bank that we knew, just two or three roots of primroses, the only roots that grew wild for miles about that part, each tendering to us its cro

rich and yellow, Give me your money to hold! Oh columbine, open your folded wrapper, Where two twin

ations are gone-in this life for ever! Wherefore I say in this life, I mean presently to show: suffice it now to say that the Summer and Autumn of human life, dry and dust

Apparelled in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been

suddenness of appreciation of enjoyment is lost; and the dark Summer foliage is not the same with the fresh light green of the young Spring leav

t heart and rested eye tell me that the

flowers appear on the earth; The time of the singing of bir

those "Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." And in the garden I wander through the bare shrubberies, varied with bright green box, and gather in my harvest there. The little Queen Elizabeth aconites, gold-crowned in their wide-frilled green collars; these are no more scant, and just breaking with bent head through cracking frosty ground. They have carpeted the brown beds, and are even waxing old and past now. The snowdrops have but left a straggler here and there; and the miniature golden volcano of the crocus has spent its columns of fire. The hazels are draped with slender, drooping catkins; the sweetbriar is letting the soft sweet-breathed leaves here and there out of the clenched hand of the bud. The cherry-tree is preparing to dress itself almost in angels' clothing, white and glistening, and delicious with all soft recesses of clear grey shadow, seen against the mild blue sky. The long branches of the horse-ches

e, and all these I love. But I see them, and I love them tenderly and quietly, not with the wonder and the glee of lif

hen the heavens are bare; Waters on a starry night Are beautiful and fair; The sunshine is a glo

to be the wonderful enchanting thing that childhood held it to be. And the thirtieth time that we see, to notice, the first snowdrop bursting through the pale green sheath above the brown bed, is a different thing from the third time. We appreciate delights keenl

nto me a tale Of

! Even yet thou art to me No bird, but

ds and on the green; And thou wert still a

lie upon the plain And listen, till

young flowers, and the bright leaves, and the blithe songs of the sweet Spring d

ancy of the lower mind- That waxing lif

ven into the Autumn days. But there is a degree, a portion of truth in it. There is a sense, no doubt

itself, but that is merely natural, and welling up irresistibly like a spring. We lose the newness of things-aye, more, far more than this, we lose the newness of ourselves, the freshness of our own heart. This is (with some in a greater, with some in a less degree) what we di

dvisedly)-the gladness and the sadness of experience. A gladness that is part of the depth of a grave river now; profound, if not light-hearted like the little spring. A gladness that, when it comes, is more rational than merely animal; that

tical is your admiration! But gain knowledge of art, gain experience; and you straightway lose in quantity what you yet gain in quality. You admire fewer pictures, but your admiration of the few is a different thing from that old admiration

s of the child. The sparkle, and bubble, and glitter, and singing have gone; but in their stead is a strength, an earnestness, an under

experience-is this also a gain? No doubt it is-no doubt it is. A wise man once told us that sorrow is better than laughter; that the house of mourning

ove our natural meannesses, and petulances, and impulses, and weaknesses, and selfishnesses, and ungenerousness-into something high and noble and stedfast, exalted, sublime, angelic, godlike; he who thus thinks of life, and watches life with this idea ever in view,-will find it not hard in time to thank God for having made him sad, even while the sadness is fresh and new and keen in his subdued and wound

aced and disentangled for the great and noble deeds of life. With a sad and a disappointed, if yet still a loving, tender heart, we can go out on God's work, go out to face evil, or to do good, more easily and thoroughly oftentimes, than when this great grave, the world, shows to us "its sunny side." Sad

es to do our work as He did His. Those moments are not the sunshine of life. They did not come when the world would have said that all around y

ts a man free and stirs him up for great and noble acts, for a resolute devoted doing of Christ's work on earth-such an experience is certai

eem, but are not, so far behind me in life. How often we pine after the innocence of child

back into my empty soul and frame The times when I

ld can have done) has yet, at last, and through much sharp experience, learnt life's great lesson, and has become (however it be but incipiently) holy and good, that deliberate and positive, though imperfect goodness, is far better than the mere negative innocence of the child. Angelic innocence is, and the innocence of Adam would have been, no doubt, intelligent innocence. But now that we have fallen, that innocence (which, after all, is but comparative) of childhood is little else but the lack of time and know

*

e look back upon life's Spring days, something really sweet, and beautiful, and desirable, seems left behind and gone. Not life's best; not the grape, but the bloom on it; not the deep blue day, but the strange glory of the morning sky. Something seems lost. I am fond of maintaining that it will yet hereafter be found. In Heaven, I think, there will be not only beauty, fairer th

e different. A hint of this seems given in an old prophecy of choice things to be had without

mbling cowslips, the starry anemones, the wood-fulls of hyacinths, the rose campions, the purple orchis spires, these will supplement, not supplant, the fair growth that used to fade at the first footfall of their advent. And so the sweetbriar roses, red and burning, and their paler sisters with unscented leaves, and the clematis snow, and the honeysuckle clusters, and the meadow-sweet; these will come not to fill an empty cup, but a full one, and one that yet, though full, is ever capable of co

nd capacity of enjoying them: and our hearts that once were young, but that still (except for

esh, and that old forgotten or sorrowfully remembered child wonder, and appreciation,

t green valley Round whose bournes such great hills swell? Are there giants in the vall

and hopes, and beliefs, and wonders, and admirations, will be restored to us new. So altogether new, so quite different in nature, as well as in degree, from the old, that they will keep

n and freshness in the heart. Oh the sadness which is an undercurrent of all

ur sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our s

will indeed dance into light, but will not, after a little brief while of enjoyment, die into the shade. Heaven's everlasting flowers will not grow dry, and dusty, an