Connected with this last mode of treating Nature, but connected in the way of contrast, is what I may call the Inhuman and Infinite side of Nature—that side which yields no response to man’s yearnings, and refuses to make itself plastic under even the strongest power of emotion. For as I have elsewhere said,[10] outside of and beyond man, aloof from his warm hopes and fears, his joy and sorrow, his strivings and aspirations, there lies the vast immensity of Nature’s forces, which pays him no homage and yields him no sympathy. This aspect of Nature may be seen even in the tamest landscape, if we look to the clouds or the stars above us, or to the ocean-waves that roar around our shores—
“Those clouds that far above us float and pause,
Whose pathless march no mortal may control,
Those ocean-waves that, wheresoe’er they roll,
Yield homage only to eternal laws.”
But nowhere is it so borne in upon man as in the wilderness where no man is, in the presence of the great mountains which seem so impassive and unchangeable. Their strength and permanence so contrast with man, of few years and full of trouble—they are altogether heedless of his feelings or his destiny. He may smile or weep, he may live or die; they care not. They are the same in all their ongoings, come what may to him. They respond to the sunrises and the sunsets, but not to his emotions. All the same they fulfill their mighty functions, careless though no human eye should ever look on them. Man’s heart may be full of gladness, yet Nature frowns; he goes forth from the death-chamber, and Nature affronts him with sunshine and the song of birds—
“Nature, an infinite, unfeeling power
From some great centre moving evermore,
Keepeth no festal-day when man is born,