No More Learning

NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS[3]


Books of natural history make the most cheerful winter reading. I read
in Audubon with a thrill of delight, when the snow covers the ground,
of the magnolia, and the Florida keys, and their warm sea-breezes; of
the fence-rail, and the cotton-tree, and the migrations of the
rice-bird; of the breaking up of winter in Labrador, and the melting
of the snow on the forks of the Missouri; and owe an accession of
health to these reminiscences of luxuriant nature.

Within the circuit of this plodding life,
There enter moments of an azure hue,
Untarnished fair as is the violet
Or anemone, when the spring strews them
By some meandering rivulet, which make
The best philosophy untrue that aims
But to console man for his grievances.
I have remembered, when the winter came,
High in my chamber in the frosty nights,
When in the still light of the cheerful moon,
On every twig and rail and jutting spout,
The icy spears were adding to their length
Against the arrows of the coming sun,
How in the shimmering noon of summer past
Some unrecorded beam slanted across
The upland pastures where the Johnswort grew;
Or heard, amid the verdure of my mind,
The bee's long smothered hum, on the blue flag
Loitering amidst the mead; or busy rill,
Which now through all its course stands still and dumb,
Its own memorial,--purling at its play
Along the slopes, and through the meadows next,
Until its youthful sound was hushed at last
In the staid current of the lowland stream;
Or seen the furrows shine but late upturned,
And where the fieldfare followed in the rear,
When all the fields around lay bound and hoar
Beneath a thick integument of snow.
So by God's cheap economy made rich
To go upon my winter's task again.

I am singularly refreshed in winter when I hear of service-berries,
poke-weed, juniper. Is not heaven made up of these cheap summer
glories? There is a singular health in those words, Labrador and East
Main, which no desponding creed recognizes. How much more than Federal
are these States! If there were no other vicissitudes than the
seasons, our interest would never tire. Much more is adoing than
Congress wots of. What journal do the persimmon and the buckeye keep,
and the sharp-shinned hawk? What is transpiring from summer to winter
in the Carolinas, and the Great Pine Forest, and the Valley of the
Mohawk? The merely political aspect of the land is never very
cheering; men are degraded when considered as the members of a
political organization. On this side all lands present only the
symptoms of decay.
I see but Bunker Hill and Sing-Sing, the District
of Columbia and Sullivan's Island, with a few avenues connecting them.
But paltry are they all beside one blast of the east or the south wind
which blows over them.

In society you will not find health, but in nature. Unless our feet at
least stood in the midst of nature, all our faces would be pale and
livid. Society is always diseased, and the best is the most so. There
is no scent in it so wholesome as that of the pines, nor any fragrance
so penetrating and restorative as the life-everlasting in high
pastures. I would keep some book of natural history always by me as a
sort of elixir, the reading of which should restore the tone of the
system. To the sick, indeed, nature is sick, but to the well, a
fountain of health. To him who contemplates a trait of natural beauty
no harm nor disappointment can come. The doctrines of despair, of
spiritual or political tyranny or servitude, were never taught by such
as shared the serenity of nature. Surely good courage will not flag
here on the Atlantic border, as long as we are flanked by the Fur
Countries. There is enough in that sound to cheer one under any
circumstances. The spruce, the hemlock, and the pine will not
countenance despair. Methinks some creeds in vestries and churches do
forget the hunter wrapped in furs by the Great Slave Lake, and that
the Esquimaux sledges are drawn by dogs, and in the twilight of the
northern night the hunter does not give over to follow the seal and
walrus on the ice. They are of sick and diseased imaginations who
would toll the world's knell so soon. Cannot these sedentary sects do
better than prepare the shrouds and write the epitaphs of those other
busy living men?