The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858

"Well!" said I, familiarly, as I felt it take its place by my side, "you have come back."

"Come back!" it replied; "will you never get beyond your miserable ideas of space, and learn that there is no separation but that of feeling, no nearness but that of sympathy? If you had cared enough for us, we should have been with you constantly."

I was anxious to get to the subject of present interest, and did not stop to discuss a point which, in one, and the highest sense, I admitted.

"What," I asked, "was that impulse which urged me to go to the Blue Mountain? Shall I find there anything supernatural?"

"Anything supernatural? What is there above Nature, or outside of it?"

"But nothing is without cause; and for an emotion so strong as I experienced, on the sight of those mountains, there must have been one."

"Very likely! if you go after it, you will find it. You probably expect to find some beautiful enchantress keeping her court on the mountain-top, and a suite of fairies."

I started, for, absurd as it may seem, that very idea, half-formed, undeveloped from very shame at my superstition, had rested in my mind.

"And," said I, at a loss what to say, "are there no such things possible?"

"All things are possible to the imagination."

"To create?"

"Most certainly! Is not creation the act of bringing into existence? and does not your Hamlet exist as immortally as your Shakspeare? The only true existence, is it not that of the Idea? Have you not seen the pines transfigured?"

"And if I imagined a race of fairies inhabiting the Blue Mountain, should I find them?"

"If you imagined them, yes! But the imagination is not voluntary; it works to supply a necessity; its function is creation, and creation is needed only to fill a vacuum. The wild Arab, feeling his own insignificance, and comprehending the necessity for a Creating Power, finds between himself and that Power, which to him, as to you the other day, assumes a personality, an immense distance, and fills the space with a race half divine, half human. It was the necessity for the fairy which created the fairy. You do not feel the same distance between yourself and a Creator, and so you do not call into existence a creative race of the same character; but has not your own imagination furnished you with images to which you may give your reverence? It may be that you diminish that distance by degrading the Great First Cause to an image of your personality, and so are not so wise as the Arab, who at once admits it to be unattainable. Each man shapes that which he looks up to by his desires or fears, and these in their turn are the results of his degree of development."

"But God, is not He the Supreme Creator?"

"Is it not as we said, that you measure the Supreme by yourself? Can you not comprehend a supreme law, an order which controls all things?"

In my meditations this doubt had often presented itself to me, and I had as often put it resolutely aside; but now to hear it urged on me in this way from this mysterious presence troubled me, and I shrank from further discussion of the topic. I earnestly desired a fuller knowledge of the nature of my colloquist.

"Tell me," said I, "do you not take cognizance of my personality?—do you read my past and my future?"

"Your past and future are contained in your present. Who can analyze what you are can see the things which made you such; for effect contains its cause;—to see the future, it needs only to know the laws which govern all things. It is a simple problem: you being given, with the inevitable tendencies to which you are subject, the result is your future; the flight of one of your rifle-balls cannot be calculated with greater certainty."

"But how shall we know those laws?" said I.

"You contain them all, for you are the result of them; and they are always the same,—not one code for your beginning, and another for your continuance. Man is the complete embodiment of all the laws thus far developed, and you have only to know yourself to know the history of creation."

This I could not gainsay, and my mind, wearied, declined to ask further. I returned to camp and went to sleep.

Several days passed without any remarkable progress in my knowledge of this strange being, though I found myself growing more and more sensitive to the presence of it each day; and at the same time the incomprehensible sympathy with Nature, for I know not what else to call it, seemed growing stronger and more startling in the effects it produced on the landscape. The influence was no longer confined to twilight, but made noon-day mystical; and I began to hear strange sounds and words spoken by disembodied voices,—not like that of my dæmon, but unaccompanied by any feeling of personal presence connected therewith. It seemed as if the vibrations shaped themselves into words, some of them of singular significance. I heard my name called, and the strangest laughs on the lake at night. My dæmon seemed averse to answering any questions on the topic of these illusions. The only reply was,—"You would be wiser, not knowing too much."

Ere many days of this solitary life had passed, I found my whole existence taken up by my fantasies. I determined to make my excursion to the Blue Mountain, and, sending Steve down to the post-office, a three-days' journey, I took the boat, with Carlo and my rifle, and pushed off. The outlet of the Blue Mountain Lakes is like all the Adirondack streams, dark and shut in by forest, which scarcely permits landing anywhere. Now and then a log fallen into the water compels the voyager to get out and lift his boat over; then a shallow rapid must be dragged over; and when the stream is clear of obstruction, it is too narrow for any mode of propulsion but poling or paddling.

I had worked several weary hours, and the sun had passed the meridian, when I emerged from the forest into a wild, swampy flat,—"wild meadow," the guides call it,—through which the stream wound, and around which was a growth of tall larches backed by pines. Where the brook seemed to reënter the wood on the opposite side, stood two immense pines, like sentinels, and such they became to me; and they looked grim and threatening, with their huge arms reaching over the gateway. I drew my boat up on the boggy shore at the foot of a solitary tamarack, into which I climbed as high as I could to look over the wood beyond.

Never shall I forget what I saw from that swaying look-out. Before me was the mountain, perhaps five miles away, covered with dense forest to within a few hundred feet of the summit, which showed bare rock with firs clinging in the clefts and on the tables, and which was crowned by a walled city, the parapet of whose walls cut with a sharp, straight line against the sky, and beyond showed spire and turret and the tops of tall trees. The walls must have been at least a hundred and fifty feet high, and I could see here and there between the group of firs traces of a road coming down the mountain-side. And I heard one of those mocking voices say, "The city of silence!"—nothing more. I felt strongly tempted to start on a flight through the air towards the city, and why I did not launch forth on the impulse I know not. My blood rushed through my veins with maddest energy, and my brain seemed to have been replaced by some ethereal substance, and to be capable of floating me off as if it were a balloon. Yet I clung and looked, my whole soul in my eyes, and had no thought of losing the spectacle for an instant, even were it to reach the city itself. The glorious glamour of that place and moment, who can comprehend it? The wind swung my tree-top to and fro, and I climbed up until the tree bent with my weight like a twig under a bird's.

Presently I heard bells and strains of music, as though all the military bands in the city were coming together on the walls; and the sounds rose and fell with the wind,—one moment entirely lost, another full and triumphant. Then I heard the sound of hunting-horns and the baying of a pack of hounds, deep-mouthed, as if a hunting-party were coming down the mountain-side. Nearer and nearer they came, and I heard merry laughing and shouting as they swept through the valley. I feared for a moment that they would find me there, and drive me, intruding, from the enchanted land.

But I must fathom the mystery, let what would come. I descended the tree, and when I had reached the boat again I found the whole thing changed. I understood that my city was only granite and fir-trees, and my music only the wind in the tree-tops. The reaction was sickening; the sunshine seemed dull and cold after the lost glory of that enchantment. The Blue Mountain was reached, its destiny fulfilled for me, and I returned to my camp, sick at heart, as one who has had a dear illusion dispelled.

The next day my mind was unusually calm and clear. I asked my dæmon what was the meaning of the enchantment of yesterday.

"It was a freak of your imagination," it replied.

"But what is this imagination, then, which, being a faculty of my own, yet masters my reason?"

"Not at all a faculty, but your very highest self, your own life in creative activity. Your reason is a faculty, and is subordinate to the purposes of your imagination. If, instead of regarding imagination as a pendant to your mental organization, you take it for what it is, a function, and the noblest one your mind knows, you will see at once why it is that it works unconsciously, just as you live unconsciously and involuntarily. Men set their reason and feeling to subdue what they consider a treacherous element in themselves; they succeed only in dwarfing their natures, and imagination is inert while reason controls; but when reason rests in sleep, and you cease to live to the external world, imagination resumes its normal power. You dream;—it is only the revival of that which you smother when you are awake. You consider the sights and sounds of yesterday follies; you reason;—imagination demonstrates its power by overturning your reason and deceiving your very senses."

"You speak of its creations; I understand this in a certain sense; but if these were such, should not they have permanence? and can anything created perish?"

"Nonsense! what will these trees be tomorrow? and the rocks you sit on, are they not changing to vegetation under you? The only creation is that of ideas; things are thin shadows. If man is not creative, he is still undeveloped."

"But is not such an assumption trenching on the supremacy of God?" I asked.

"What do you understand by 'God?'"

"An infinitely wise and loving Controller of events, of course," I replied.

"Did you ever find any one whose ideas on the subject agreed with yours?"

"Not entirely."

"Then your God is not the same as the God of other men; from the Fee-Jeean to the Christian there is a wide range. Of course there is a first great principle of life; but this personality you all worship, is it not a creation?"

I now felt this to be the great point of the demon's urging; it recurred too often not to be designed. Led on by the sophistry of my tempter, I had floated unconsciously to this issue, practically admitting all; but when this suggestion stood completely unclothed before me, my soul rose in horror at the abyss before it. For an instant all was chaos, and the very order of Nature seemed disorder. Life and light vanished from the face of the earth; my night made all things dead and dark. A universe without a God! Creation seemed to me for that moment but a galvanized corse. What my emotions were no human being who has not felt them can conceive. My first impulse was to suicide; with the next I cried from the depths of my despair, "God deliver me from the body of this death!" It was but a moment,—and there came, in the place of the cold questioning voice of my dæmon, one of ineffable music, repeating words familiar to me from childhood, words linked to everything loved and lovely in my past:—"Ye believe in God, believe also in me." The hot tears for another moment blotted out the world from sight. I said once more to the questioner, "Now who are you?"

"Your own doubts," was the reply; and it seemed as if only I spoke to myself.

Since that day I have never reasoned with my doubts, never doubted my imagination.

ALL'S WELL

Sweet-voicèd Hope, thy fine discourseForetold not half life's good to me;Thy painter, Fancy, hath not forceTo show how sweet it is to be!Thy witching dreamAnd pictured schemeTo match the fact still want the power;Thy promise braveFrom birth to graveLife's boon may beggar in an hour.Ask and receive,—'tis sweetly said;Yet what to plead for know I not;For Wish is worsted, Hope o'ersped,And aye to thanks returns my thought.If I would pray,I've nought to sayBut this, that God may be God still;For Him to liveIs still to give,And sweeter than my wish his will.O wealth of life beyond all bound!Eternity each moment given!What plummet may the Present sound?Who promises a future heaven?Or glad, or grieved,Oppressed, relieved,In blackest night, or brightest day,Still pours the floodOf golden good,And more than heartfull fills me aye.My wealth is common; I possessNo petty province, but the whole;What's mine alone is mine far lessThan treasure shared by every soul.Talk not of store,Millions or more,—Of values which the purse may hold,—But this divine!I own the mineWhose grains outweigh a planet's gold.I have a stake in every star,In every beam that fills the day;All hearts of men my coffers are,My ores arterial tides convey;The fields, the skies,And sweet repliesOf thought to thought are my gold-dust,—The oaks, the brooks,And speaking looksOf lovers' faith and friendship's trust.Life's youngest tides joy-brimming flowFor him who lives above all years,Who all-immortal makes the Now,And is not ta'en in Time's arrears:His life's a hymnThe seraphimMight hark to hear or help to sing,And to his soulThe boundless wholeIts bounty all doth daily bring."All mine is thine," the sky-soul saith;"The wealth I am, must thou become:Richer and richer, breath by breath,—Immortal gain, immortal room!"And since all hisMine also is,Life's gift outruns my fancies far,And drowns the dreamIn larger stream,As morning drinks the morning-star.

THE BIRDS OF THE PASTURE AND FOREST

He who has always lived in the city or its suburbs, who has seldom visited the interior except for purposes of trade, and whose walks have not often extended beyond those roads which are bordered on each side by shops and dwelling-houses, may never have heard the birds that form the subject of this sketch. These are the birds of the pasture and forest,—those shy, melodious warblers, who sing only in the ancient haunts of the Dryads, and of those nymphs who waited upon Diana in her hunting-excursions, but who are now recognized only by the beautiful plants which, with unseen hands, they rear in the former abodes of the celestial huntress. These birds have not probably multiplied, like the familiar birds, with the increase of human population and the extension of agriculture. They were perhaps as numerous in the days of King Philip as they are now. Though they do not shun mankind, they keep aloof from cultivated grounds, living chiefly in the deep wood or on the edge of the forest, and in the bushy pasture.

There is a peculiar wildness in the songs of this class of birds, that awakens a delightful mood of mind, similar to that which is excited by reading the figurative lyrics of a romantic age. This feeling is, undoubtedly, to a certain extent, the effect of association. Having always heard their notes in rude, wild, and wooded places, they never fail to bring this kind of scenery vividly before the imagination, and their voices affect us like the sounds of mountain-streams. There is a little Sparrow which I often hear about the shores of unfrequented ponds, and in their untrodden islets, and never in any other situations. The sound of his voice, therefore, always enhances the sensation of rude solitude with which I contemplate this wild and desolate scenery. We often see him perched upon a dead tree that stands in the water, a few rods from the shore, apparently watching our angling operations from his leafless perch, where he sings so sweetly, that the very desolation of the scene borrows a charm from his voice that renders every object delightful. This bird I believe to be the Fringilla palustris of Wilson.

It is certain that the notes of the solitary birds, compared with those of the Robin and Linnet, excite a different class of sensations. I can imagine that there is a similar difference in the flavors of a cherry and a cranberry. If the former is sweeter, the latter has a spicy zest that is peculiar to what we call natural fruit. The effect is the same, however, whether it be attributable to some intrinsic quality, or to association, which is indeed the source of some of the most delightful emotions of the human soul.

Nature has made all her scenes, and the sights and sounds that accompany them, more lovely, by causing them to be respectively suggestive of a certain class of sensations. The birds of the pasture and forest are not frequent enough in cultivated places to be associated with the garden or village inclosure. Nature has confined particular birds and animals to certain localities, and thereby adds a poetic and a picturesque attraction to their features. There are also certain flowers that cannot be cultivated in the garden, as if they were designed for the exclusive adornment of those secluded arbors which the spade and the plough have never profaned. Here flowers grow which are too holy for culture, and birds sing whose voices were never heard in the cage of the voluptuary, and whose tones inspire us with a sense of freedom known only to those who often retire from the world, to live in religious communion with Nature.

When the flowers of early summer are gone, and the graceful neottia is seen in the meadows, extending its spiral clusters among the nodding grasses,—when the purple orchis is glowing in the wet grounds, and the roadsides are gleaming with the yellow blossoms of the hypericum, the merry voice of the Bobolink has ceased, and many other familiar birds have become almost silent. At this time, if we stroll away from the farm and the orchard into more retired and wooded haunts, we may hear, at all times of the day and at frequent intervals, the pensive and melodious notes of the Wood-Sparrow, who sings as if he were delighted at being left almost alone to warble and complain to the benevolent deities of the grove. He who in his youth has made frequent visits to these pleasant and solitary places, and wished that he could live and love forever among the wild-roses, the blushing azaleas, the red summer-lilies, and the thousands of beautiful and sweet-scented flowers that spring up among the various spicy and fruit-bearing shrubs which unite to form a genuine huckleberry-pasture,—he only knows the unspeakable delights which are awakened by the sweet, simple notes of this little warbler.

The Wood-Sparrow (Fringilla pusilla) is somewhat less than a Canary, with a chestnut-colored crown; above of a grayish brown hue, and dusky white beneath. Though he does not seem to be a shy bird, I have never seen him in cultivated grounds, and the inmates of solitary cottages alone are privileged to hear his notes from their windows. He loves the hills which are half covered with young pines, viburnums, cornels, and huckleberry-bushes, and feeds upon the seeds of grasses and wild lettuce, with occasional repasts of insects and berries.

His notes are sweet and plaintive, seldom consisting of more than one strain. He commences slowly, as if repeating the syllable, de de de de de de d' d' d' d' d' d' d' r' r' r',—increasing in rapidity, and at the same time rising as it were by semi-tones, or chromatically, to about a major fourth on the scale. In midsummer, when this bird is most musical, he occasionally lengthens his song by alternately ascending and descending, interposing a few chirping notes between the ascending and descending series. The song loses a part of its simplicity, and, as it seems to me, is not improved by this variation.

While listening to the notes of the Wood-Sparrow, we are continually saluted by the agreeable, though less musical song of the Chewink, or Ground-Robin,—a bird that frequents similar places. This is a very beautiful bird, elegantly spotted with white, red, and black,—the female being of a bright bay color where the male is red. Every rambler knows him, not only by his plumage and his peculiar note, but also by his singular habit of lurking about among the bushes, appearing and disappearing like a squirrel, and watching all our movements. Though he does not avoid our company, it is with difficulty that a marksman can obtain a good aim at him, so rapidly does he change his position among the leaves and branches. In this habit he resembles the Wren. While we are watching his motions, he pauses in his song, and utters that peculiar note of complaint from which he has derived his name, Chewink, though the sound he utters is more like chewee, accenting the second syllable.

The Chewink (Fringilla erythrophthalma) is a very constant singer during four months of the year, from the middle of April. He is very untiring in his lays, seldom resting for any considerable time from morning till night, being never weary in rain or in sunshine, or at noon-day in the hottest weather of the season. His song consists of two long notes, the first about a third above the second, and the last part is made up of several rapidly uttered notes about one tone below the first note.

There is an expression of great cheerfulness in these notes; but music, like poetry, must be somewhat plaintive in its character, to take strong hold of the feelings. I have never known a person to be affected by these notes as by those of the Wood-Sparrow. While engaged in singing, the Chewink is usually perched on the lower branch of a tree, near the edge of a wood, or on the top of a tall bush. He is a true forest-bird, and builds his nest in the thickets that conceal the boundaries of the wood.

The notes of the Chewink and his general appearance and habits are well calculated to render him conspicuous, and they cause him to be always noticed and remembered. Our birds are like our men of genius. As in the literary world there is a description of talent that must be discovered and pointed out by an observing few, before the great mass can understand it or even know its existence,—so the sweetest songsters of the wood are unknown to the mass of the community, while many very ordinary performers, whose talents are conspicuous, are universally known and admired.

As we advance into the wood, if it be near mid-day, or before the decline of the sun, the notes of two small birds will be sure to attract our attention. These notes are very similar, and as slender and piercing as the chirp of a grasshopper, being distinguished from the latter only by a different and more pleasing modulation. The birds to which I refer are the Red Start (Muscicapa ruticilla) and the Speckled Creeper (Sylvia varia). The first is the more rarely seen of the two, being a bird of the deep forest, and shunning observation by hiding himself in the most obscure parts of the wood. In general appearance, and in the color of his plumage, he bears a resemblance to the Ground-Robin, though not more than half his size. He lives entirely on insects, catching them while they are flying in the air.

His song is similar to that of the Summer Yellow-Bird, so common in our gardens among the fruit-trees, but it is more shrill and feeble. The Creeper's song does not differ from it more than the songs of different individuals of the same species may differ. This bird may be seen creeping like a Woodpecker around the branches of trees, feeding upon the grubs and insects that are lodged upon the bark. He often leaves the forest, and may be seen busily searching the trees in the orchard and garden. The restless activity of the birds of this species affords a proof of the countless myriads of insects that must be destroyed by them in the course of one season,—insects which, if not kept in check by these and other small birds, would multiply to such an extreme as to render the earth uninhabitable by man.

While listening with close attention to the slender notes of either of the last-named birds, often hardly audible amidst the din of grasshoppers, the rustling of leaves, and the sighing of winds among the tall oaken boughs, suddenly the wood resounds with a loud, shrill song, like the sharpest notes of the Canary. The bird that startles one with this vociferous note is the Oven-Bird, (Turdus aurocapillus), or Golden-Crowned Thrush. It is the smallest of the Thrushes, is confined exclusively to the wood, and when singing is particularly partial to noon-day. There is no melody in his song. He begins rather low, increasing in loudness as he proceeds, until the last notes are so loud as to seem almost in our immediate presence. He might be supposed to utter His words, I see, I see, I see, etc.,—emphasizing the first word, and repeating the words six or eight times, louder and louder with each repetition. No other bird equals this little Thrush in the emphasis with which he delivers his brief communication. His notes are associated with summer noon-days in the deep woods, and, when bursting upon the ear in the silence of noon, they disperse all melancholy thoughts, and inspire one with a vivid consciousness of life.