Onward and on, the eternal Pan
Who layeth the world's incessant plan,
Halteth never in one shape,

But forever doth escape,

Like wave or flame, into new forms
Of gem, and air, of plants and worms.

As the bee through the garden ranges, From world to world the godhead changes;

As the sheep go feeding in the waste, From form to form He maketh haste. This vault which glows immense with light

Is the inn where he lodges for a

night.

What recks such Traveller if the

bowers

Which bloom and fade like meadow flowers,

A bunch of fragrant lilies be,

Or the stars of eternity?

Alike to him the better, the worse,

The glowing angel, the outcast corse.
Thou metest him by centuries,
And lo! he passes like the breeze;
Thou seek'st in globe and galaxy,
He hides in pure transparency;
Thou askest in fountains and in fires,
He is the essence that inquires.
He is the axis of the star;

He is the sparkle of the spar;
He is the heart of every creature;
He is the meaning of each feature;
And his mind is the sky

Than all it holds more deep, more

high."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

AMONG THE FERNS

LAY among the ferns,

Where they lifted their fronds innumerable, in the greenwood wilderness, like wings winnowing the air;

And their voices went past me continually.

And I listened, and lo! softly inaudibly raining I heard not the voices of the ferns only, but of all living creatures:

Voices of mountain and star,

Of cloud and forest and ocean,

And of the little rills tumbling amid the rocks, And of the high tops where the moss-beds are and the springs arise.

As the wind at mid-day rains whitening over

the grass,

As the night-bird glimmers a moment, fleeting between the lonely watcher and the moon,

So softly inaudibly they rained,

Where I sat silent.

And in the silence of the greenwood I knew the secret of the growth of the ferns;

I saw their delicate leaflets tremble breathing an undescribed and unuttered life;

And, below, the ocean lay sleeping;

And round them the mountains and the stars dawned in glad companionship for ever.

And a voice came to me, saying:

In every creature, in forest and ocean, in leaf

and tree and bird and beast and man, there moves a spirit other than its mortal own,

Pure, fluid, as air-intense as fire,

Which looks abroad and passes along the spirits

of all other creatures, drawing them close to itself,

Nor dreams of other law than that of perfect equality;

And this is the spirit of immortality and peace.

And whatsoever creature has this spirit, to it no harm may befall:

No harm can befall, for wherever it goes it has its nested home,

And to it every loss comes charged with an equal gain;

It gives- but to receive a thousand-fold;

It yields its life- but at the hands of love; And death is the law of its eternal growth.

And I saw that was the law of every creature - that this spirit should enter in and take possession of it,

That it might have no more fear or doubt or be at war within itself any longer.

And lo! in the greenwood all around me it moved,

Where the sunlight floated fragrant under the boughs, and the fern-fronds winnowed the

air;

In the oak-leaves dead of last year, and in the small shy things that rustled among them; In the songs of the birds and the broad shadowing leaves overhead;

In the fields sleeping below, and in the river and the high dreaming air;

Gleaming ecstatic it moved - with joy incarnate. And it seemed to me, as I looked, that it penetrated all these things, suffusing them;

And wherever it penetrated, behold! there was

nothing left down to the smallest atom which was not a winged spirit instinct with life.

Who shall understand the words of the ferns lifting their fronds innumerable?

What man shall go forth into the world, holding his life in his open palm —

With high adventurous joy from sunrise to sun

set

Fearless, in his sleeve laughing, having outflanked his enemies?

His heart like Nature's garden - that all men abide in

Free, where the great winds blow, rains fall, and the sun shines,

And manifold growths come forth and scatter their fragrance?

Who shall be like a grave, where men may bury Sin and sorrow and shame, to rise in the new

day

Glorious out of their grave? who, deeply listening,

Shall hear through his soul the voices of all creation,

Voices of mountain and star, voices of all men, Softly, audibly raining?-shall seize and fix

them,

Rivet them fast with love, no more to lose them?

Who shall be that spirit of deep fulfilment, Himself, self-centred? yet evermore from that centre

Over the world expanding, along all creatures Loyally passing - with love, in perfect equality?

Him immortality crowns. In him all sorrow

And mortal passion of death shall pass from creation.

They who sit by the road and are weary shall rise up

As he passes. They who despair shall arise.

Who shall understand the words of the ferns winnowing the air?

Death shall change as the light in the morning changes;

Death shall change as the light 'twixt moonset and dawn.

Edward Carpenter

I

I HEARD THE VOICE OF THE WOODS

HEARD the voice of the woods and of the

grass growing silently and of the delicate bending ferns,

And it said:

For the dumb and for the generations of them that have no voice my speech is

For them too help comes.

I am the spirit of the Earth.

Round me the woods and mountains roll, rising and falling to the far sea;

In the hollow below me roars the great river to its doom;

The clouds draw onward; and the voices of the generations of men are woven like thin gossamer through the air about me. Yet here where I am there is peace ·

such as

mortal yet on earth hath hardly known, But which shall be known, and even

now is

known.