The spirit must get
free, and the longing for such freedom has been well called "a barbaric
passion, a nostalgia for the life of the moor and windy sea."
There are two ways of loving and understanding nature. Meredith speaks
of those who only see nature by looking at it along the barrel of a gun.
The phrase describes that large company of people who feel the call of
the wild indeed, and long for the country at certain seasons, but must
always be doing something with nature--either hunting, or camping out,
or peradventure going upon a journey like Baal in the Old Testament. But
there is another way, to which Carlyle calls attention as characteristic
of Robert Burns, and which he pronounces the test of a true poet. The
test is, whether he can wander the whole day beside a burn "and no'
think lang." Such was Fiona's way with nature. She needed nothing to
interest her but the green earth itself, and its winds and its waters.
It was surely the Fiona side of Sharp that made him kiss the grassy turf
and then scatter it to the east and west and north and south; or lie
down at night upon the ground that he might see the intricate patterns
of the moonlight, filtering through the branches of the trees.
Pages:
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124