Anyhow I see plainly that like all created things you do not yield yourself up as to what you are at the first or the thousandth onset,
And that the scientific people for all their telescopes know as little about you as any one—
Perhaps less than most.
How curious the mystery of creation."[49]
The poet, bereft of words whereby to give vent to his emotion, falls back on "the mystery of creation."—Not dissimilarly says Carlyle, "The rudest mind has still some intimation of the greatness there is in Mystery."[50] And again, "The mystical enjoyment of an object goes infinitely farther than the intellectual."[51]—It is not alone the indescribable colour of the delicate corolla, nor is it the minute knowledge of its astonishing structure, that causes to blaze up in the beholder a sense of something profound; it is not alone the majestic heap of the cloud, nor the piercing radiance of the quiet stars, known to be incomputably distant, that lifts one to the contemplation of the lofty; it is the immanent, the permanent Mystery that pervades and unifies all that ever was or is or shall be.
XXVI
The Pleasures of Walking
§ 64
"But what possible pleasure, what possible profit," I can hear the practical and common-sensible man asking, "is to be gained from walking—walking? Surely walking is the paltriest of sports. Why not write of riding, driving, rowing, bicycling, motoring, aeroplaning—any mode of locomotion rather than that of mere trudging?"—Well, in a technical and paronomasiacal phrase, the question really solvitur ambulando. For one thing, horses have to be baited, boats caulked, bicycles pumped up, balloons inflated, and motor cars eternally tinkered at—aeroplanes fly far beyond my welkin. For another thing, not the least of the practical blessings incident to a walk is that you are beyond the reach of letters and telegrams and telephones. You are not likely to be served with a writ when walking; you can laugh at capiases and injunctions; drafts at sight and judgment summonses cannot easily overtake you on a trudge. "I have generally found," says De Quincey, "that, if you are in quest of some certain escape from Philistines of whatsoever class—sheriff-officers, bores, no matter what—the surest refuge is to be found amongst hedgerows and fields."[52] (Had De Quincey lived in the twentieth century, truly he might have added that it is amongst the fields and hedgerows also that one gets away from that pest of civilisation, the pene-ubiquitous advertisement.—And not always even amongst fields and hedgerows, as the landscape-spoiling hoardings along the routes of our railways prove. Like Nero, I sometimes wish that the erectors of sky-signs and the daubers of barns and fences had but one neck that I might ... that I might—lay upon it a heavy yoke of taxation.—I throw out that hint to any Finance Minister or Chancellor of the Exchequer that may care to act upon it.)
But far rather would I reply to my quærist in other words than mine.—"I went to the woods," says Thoreau, "because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life.... I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.... Our life is frittered away by detail.... In the midst of this chopping sea of civilised life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand and one items to be allowed for that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds."[53]