the freshness of the world’s original forces is one of the wonders which binds me in perpetual fascination. my own strength is a little thing. i am sometimes sick and sometimes well; some days i am bounding with enthusiastic life, at other times i am drooping with weariness and ill feeling. but these things, the great currents of original power which make the world, are fresh and forever renewing themselves.
every morning i rise from my sleep restored and go out of doors, and there they are. at the foot of my garden is a river which has been running all night long, a swift and never-resting stream. it has been running so every day and every night for centuries and centuries—and thousands of centuries, for all i know—and yet here it runs. people have come and gone; nations have risen and fallen; all sorts of puny strengths have had their day and have perished; but this thing has never weakened nor modified itself nor changed,—at least not very much. its life is so long and so strong.
the freshness of the universe
and another thing that strikes me is the force and persistency of the winds. how sweet they are, how refreshing to the wearied body! i rise with sluggishness, and a sense of disgust with the world, mayhap, and yet here are the winds, fresh as in the beginning, to run me through and cool my face and hands and fill my breast with pure air and make me think the world is good again.239 i step out of my doorway, and here they are, blowing across the garden, shaking the leaves of the trees, rustling in the grass, fluttering at my coat-sleeves and my hair; and i am no whit the wiser as to what they are. only i know that they are old, old, and yet as strong and invigorating as they ever were, and will be when my little strength is wasted and i am no more.
and here is the sun, bright, golden thing of the sky, which i may not even look at directly but which makes my day just the same. it is so invigorating, so healing, so beautiful. i know it is a commonplace, the thing that must have been before i could be, and yet it is so novel and fresh and new, even now. i rise, and this old sunlight is the newest thing in the world. beside this day, which it makes, all things are old—my little house, which after all has stood only a few years; my possessions, dusty with standing a little while, and fading; myself, who am less young and strong by a day, getting older. and yet here it is, new after a million years—and a billion years, for aught i know—pouring this golden flood into my garden and making it what i wish it to be, new. the wonder of this force is appealing to me. it touches the innermost strangeness of my being.
and then there is the earth upon which i stand, strange chemic dust, here covered with grass but elsewhere covered with trees and flowers and hard habitations of men, yielding its perennial toll of beauty. we cannot understand the ground, but its newness, the perennial force with which it produces our food and beauty, this is so patent to all. i look at the ground beneath my feet, and lo, the agedness of it does not240 occur to me, only its freshness. the good ground! the new earth! this thing which is old, old—old as time itself—must always have been and must always be. where was it before it was here? what stars did it make, and moons? what ancient lives have trod this earth, this ground beneath my feet, and now make it? and yet how comes it that i who am so young find it so new to me and myself old as compared with its tremendous age! that is the wonder of this original force to me.
and in my yard are trees and little things such as vines and stone walls, which, for all their newness and briefness, have so much more enduring power than have i. this tree near my door is fully a hundred years old, and yet it will be young, comparatively speaking, and strong, when i am no longer in existence. its trunk is straight, its head is high, and here am i who, looking upon it now as old, will soon be older in spirit, unable to bear the too-heavy burden of a short existence and tottering wearily about when it will still be strong and straight, good for another life the length of mine—a strange contrast of forces. that is but one of the wonders of the forces of life: their persistence.
yet it is this morning waking that impresses the marvel of their greatness upon me. it is this new day, this new-old river, this new-old tree, the new earth, so old and yet so new, which point the frailty of my physical and mental existence and make me wonder what the riddle of the universe may be.
