Even in its hours of silence, the forest occasionally finds a voice, a sound, or a murmur, which recalls to you the remembrance of life.
Sometimes the laborious woodpecker, laboriously toiling at its task of excavating the oak, cheers itself with its singular cry.
Frequently the heavy hammer of the quarryman, falling and falling on the sandstone, resounds in the distance with a hoarse, dull echo.
And finally, if you listen attentively, you catch a significant hum, and see, at your feet, legions of ants,—countless populations, the true inhabitants of the place, speeding over the withered and falling leaves.
So many images are these of persistent toil, which blend with the fanciful a serious gravity. Each in his own way digs and digs. And do thou too pursue thy work, and exhume and stir up thy thought.
It is an admirable place to cure you of the great malady of the day—its shiftiness, its empty agitation. The time does not know its own disease; men say that they are clogged and cloyed, when they have scarcely skimmed the surface. They set out with the delusive notion that the best of everything is superficial and external, and that it is sufficient to put their lips to the cup. But the surface is frequently froth. Lower down, and within, lies the elixir of life. We must penetrate deeper, and mingle more intimately with things, willingly and by habit, so as to discover their harmony, in which lies true happiness and strength. The real misfortune, the moral misery, is our want of concentration.
I love those spots which confine and limit the field of thought. Here, in this narrow circle of hill and wood, every change is purely external and wholly optical. With so many points of shelter, the winds, necessarily, do not greatly vary. The fixity of the atmosphere furnishes us with a moral basis. I am not certain that our ideas would here be strongly stimulated; but he who comes with them fully aroused may long preserve and cherish them, without any interruption of his dream; may seize and relish all the outer accidents, as well as the inner mysteries. The soul may here put forth its roots, and find that the true, the exquisite sense of life, is not to skim the surface, but to study, and probe, and enjoy the depth.
This spot admonishes thought. The sandstone, fixed and motionless beneath the mobility of the leaves, is eloquent enough in its very silence. Since when has it been planted here? Ah, what ages ago, since, despite its hardness, the rain has succeeded in excavating it! No other force has prevailed against it. Such as it was, even so it is; and thus it seems to say to the heart, "Persevere!"