RECREATION.
Nature is wholesome. Without her elixirs daily taken we perish of lassitude and inanity. The fountains must be stirred to their depths and their torrents sent bounding along their sluices, else we sink presently into the pool of inertia, victims of indecision and slaves of fate. "Thy body, O well disposed man, is a meadow through which flow three hundred and sixty-five rivulets." Every pulse pushes nature's quaternion along life's currents recreating us afresh; the morn feeding the morn, Memnon's music issuing from every stop, as if the Orient itself had sung.
Nature is virtuous. Imparting sanity and sweetness, it spares from decay, giving life with temperance and a continency that keeps our pleasures chaste and perennial. Nothing short of her flowing atmosphere suffices to refill our urns. Neither books, company, conversation,—not Genius even, the power present in persons, nature's nature pouring her floods through mind,—not this is enough. Nature is the good Baptist plunging us in her Jordan streams to be purified of our stains, and fulfil all righteousness. And wheresoever our lodge, there is but the thin casement between us and immensity. Nature without, mind within, inviting us forth into the solacing air, the blue ether, if we will but shake our sloth and cares aside, and step forth into her great contentments.
As from himself he fled, Possessed, insane, Tormenting demons drove him from the gate: Away he sped, Casting his woes behind, His joys to find, His better mind.
'Tis passing strange, The glorious change, The pleasing pain!
Recovered, Himself again Over his threshold led, Peace fills his breast, He finds his rest; Expecting angels his arrival wait.
If we cannot spin our tops briskly as boys do theirs, the wailers may chant their dirges over us. Enthusiasm is existence; earnestness, life's exceeding great reward. How busy then, and above criticism. Our cup runs over. But a parted activity, divorcing us from ourselves, degrades our noblest parts to the sway of the lowest and renders our task a drudgery and shame. For what avails, if while one's mind hovers about Olympus, his members flounder in Styx, and he is drawn asunder in the conflict? Let the days deify the days, the work the workman, giving the joyous task that leaves pleasant memories behind, and ennobles in the performance:
Tasked days Above delays; Hours that borrow Speed of the morrow, Light from sorrow: Business bate not, Want nor wait not, Doubt nor date not; Life from limb forbid to sever, Recreate in rapt endeavor.
We come as a muse to our toil and find amusement in it; to a taskmaster whose company never tires. 'Tis life, the partaking of immortality. A day lived so, glorifies all moments afterwards. Long postponed, perhaps, the hours wearisome, till broke this immortal morning with engagements that time can complete never, nor compel, and whose importunity outlasts the hours.
Sleep, too, having the keys of life in its keeping. How we rise from its delectable divinations with eyes sovereign and anointed for the day's occupations. All our powers are touched with flame, all things are possible. But last night, the world had come to an end; the floods ebbed low, as if the fates were reversing the torch. How we blazed all the morning, to be cinders yesternight. Then came the god to re-kindle our faded embers, the Phœnix wings her way to meet the rising dawn and embrace the young world once more. Sleep took the sleep out of us. From forth the void there rises a roseate morn upon us.
The flattering East her gates impearled, We hunt the morning round the world.
Nor is a day lived if the dawn is left out of it, with the prospects it opens. Who speaks charmingly of nature or of mankind, like him who comes bibulous of sunrise and the fountains of waters?
"Mornings are mysteries, the first world's youth, Man's resurrection, and the future's bud Shown in their birth; they make us happy, Make us rich."
Rise in the morning, rise While yet the streaming tide Flames o'er the blue acclivities, And pours its splendors wide; Kindling its high intent Along the firmament, Silence and sleep to break, Imaginations wake, Ideas insphere And bring them here. Loiter nor play In soft delay; Speed glad thy course along The orbs and globes among, And as yon toiling sun Attain thy high meridian: Radiant and round thy day;— Speed, speed thee on thy way.
"Every day is a festival, and that which makes it the more splendid is gladness. For as the world is a spacious and beautiful temple, so is life the most perfect institution that introduces us into it. And it is but just that it should be full of cheerfulness and tranquillity." Our dispositions are the atmosphere we breathe, and we carry our climate and world in ourselves. Good humor, gay spirits are the liberators, the sure cure for spleen and melancholy. Deeper than tears, these irradiate the tophets with their glad heavens. Go laugh, vent the pits, transmuting imps into angels by the alchymy of smiles. The satans flee at the sight of these redeemers. And he who smiles never is beyond redemption. Once clothed in a suit of light we may cast aside forever our sables. Our best economist of this flowing estate is good temper, without whose presidency life is a perplexity and disaster. Luck is bad luck and ourselves a disappointment and vexation. Victims of our humors, we victimize everybody. How the swift repulsions play: our atoms all insular, insulating; demonized, demonizing, from heel to crown; at the mercy of a glance, a gesture, a word, and ourselves overthrown. Equanimity is the gem in Virtue's chaplet and St. Sweetness the loveliest in her calendar. "On beholding thyself, fear," says the oracle. Only the saints are sane and wholesome.
"That which makes us have no need Of physic, that's physic indeed. Hark, hither, reader, wilt thou see Nature her own physician be? Wilt see a man all his own wealth, His own music, his own health,— A man whose sober soul can tell How to wear her garments well: Her garments that upon her sit, As garments should do, close and fit; A well-clothed soul that's not oppressed, Nor choked with what she should be dressed; A soul sheathed in a crystal shrine, Through which all her bright features shine, As when a piece of wanton lawn, A thin, aerial veil is drawn O'er beauty's face, seeming to hide, More sweetly shows the blushing bride: A soul, whose intellectual beams No mists do mask, no lazy streams: A happy soul that all the way To heaven rides in a summer's day? Wouldst see a man whose well-warmed blood Bathes him in a genuine flood,— A man whose tuned humors be A seat of rarest harmony? Wouldst see blithe looks, fresh cheeks beguile Age; wouldst see December smile? Wouldst see nests of new roses grow In a bed of reverend snow? Warm thought, free spirits flattering Winter's self into a spring? In sum, wouldst see a man that can Live to be old, and still a man Whose latest and most leaden hours Fall with soft wings, stuck with soft flowers; And when life's sweet fable ends, Soul and body part like friends; No quarrels, murmurs, no delay, A kiss, a sigh,—and so away,— This rare one, reader, wouldst thou see? Hark within, and thyself be he."
