"The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! This sea that bears her bosom to the moon; The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are upgathered now like sleeping flowers; For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be A pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn."
There is kept before your mind the unquestionable seriousness of the influences of cosmic forces; the effects of an intimate relationship with Nature. Burroughs always sees the better and larger side of things. You never hear any of the nature prattle so common among the less serious students.
At this moment the red-eyed vireo burst in full song only a few feet from us and a Rubenstein would not have commanded our attention quicker. "The little fellow is doing almost the work of two," said the naturalist, so fluent was the song. He came within close range and softened down into a low mellow song, whereupon Mr. Burroughs remarked: "His audience is not quite as large as he first thought, so he is tuning his harp down accordingly." Here we came into the settlement roadway and returned to the Lodge for dinner.
In the afternoon, we set out early from Woodchuck Lodge for a long tramp through the pasture south of the Burroughs farm and in the direction of the Nath Chase farm. Back through the woods between the Lodge and the old farm, were scattered apple trees, which had some apples on them. Mr. Burroughs told something of the history of some of these apple trees, that they had been grafted many years ago by his father, and that others had been planted by the cattle as they followed the pathway through this pasture. There were signs that the gray squirrels had been eating the apples. We saw several piles of chips and a few apple seeds scattered on the wall fence, which the squirrels had chosen for a festal hall. On this wall, the naturalist would lean and look off over the hills toward the town of Roxbury, and tell of the neighbors who had settled this field and that. His mind sometimes seemed to be on,