Temperamentally John Burroughs was an optimist, as vocationally he was a writer, and avocationally a vine-dresser. He planted and expected to gather—grapes from his grapevines, books from his book-vines, years, satisfactions, sorrows, joys, all that was due him.
The waters know their own and draw
The brook that springs in yonder heights;
So flows the good with equal law
Unto the soul of pure delights.
And what is it that was due him? Everything; everything essential; as everything essential is due the pine-tree, the prairie, the very planet. Is not this earth a star? Are not the prairie, the pine-tree, and man the dust of stars? each a part of the other? all parts of one whole—a universe, round, rolling, without beginning, without end, without flaw, without lack, a universe self-sustained, perfect?
I stay my haste, I make delays,
For what avails this eager pace?
I stand amid the eternal ways,
And what is mine shall know my face.