If I were to explain the day, it I would not make drowsy. Yonder bird on el’gant sky, I’d have him ope his beak – as so he did! – and speak like wind, so delicate he was. The clouds like smoke I cannot juxtapose, for smoke and clouds are neither elegant nor peaceful as these figures laced like patchwork on the sky above. Like pearls they sat inviolable, yet tucked inside the oyster of their day had yet a covert way to them, that, if you had not descried their beast, their beast would make them mask: and once you caught his form his face would not be that a minute ere it was. The wind caught it! I shouldn’t say the wind was light, to move a mass as he; I shall not say that it was strong, for little wind I felt: so simply I conclude there was no wind, for surely something high and something low had canceled each before. Inattentive to the wind, my consciousness affixed upon the grass, for in an endless field I stood. It grew from root to tip like versions of its own, miniature forest, thick to tread and difficult, as it was, to wade into. Small flowers frequented the field, perplexing at their ubiquity, yet beautiful, like lapis shaped into leaves and left to dry. Dry! how could they dry! As if the leaves were waves and my legs the oars to a passenger ship, the oars a constant thread in water, uninterruptedly wet – so too was that field wet from night, as if the night had liquefied and fallen on the day. So these crystal buds so frequent in my eyes – how could they dry? Unless the flower took – and now it seemed this true – the form of water with its weight, which smeared its petals, taking with its path their gainly frame. The more I glance, the best this seemed, for each flower, I saw, beheld its own, unusual form, as if Nature had no adamant decision when She made their mould. So forth my path progressed, unbounded in the field, for no limit it pertained: it seemed for miles it would excel, if not for the forest surrounding its waist. In this forest the grass would wilt, for only here were animals slunk nocturnally in mud, eyes crept distrustfully towards beams of light inconstant – and how large of eyes they were! Bulbous eyes, ringed and darkened, vacant and pale, and if they closed, inseparable they would become of the mud in which they lay. They watched: as day grew long; as others passed, the ones awake, the ones that loved the light; or others sat, just like it, distant through the trees and hardly set on one particular form.
How strange this sight! while I in the field observed it, or what I thought it was. Could something fear the light when such a sun sat on the sky, as sat on it today? It seemed impossible, yet fantastic as any treasure before its discovery.
       I stayed in the field, yet partook an incline on the pasture, so at the end I stood above the world on a minor hill, and watched it fade into relative existence. What symmetry! No architect but God could make such a design. Northeast the ocean lingered amongst the trees, immensely huge yet miles distant. Clouds lay on their backs like whales on the water, shimmering darkly in the coalescence that was the sky. That aforementioned bird that spoke like wind was perched atop a telephone line, still chirruping in its twittery little symphony. As if the breath of its voice were might enough to move the air, the wind on this incline had strengthened, as if in a frantic scurry to reach the summit it had quickened its idle pace and fallen into a hurried run. I tasted raspberry in my mouth, which typically, I admit, would be a totally irrelevant fact; but the combination of a sweet taste and tasteful sight is more than senses and his words can bear. It was as if the pure perfection of the day had wrought itself unto my tongue, where in a simple metamorphosis it had made itself a new form, a different mean in which to express its many joys.
       O Nature, carpe diem! If e’er you change, do it subtly, so your face still I may see. Your bright illusion many poets ere hath spurred, as only thee and love can take the ineffable and place’t on the eye of incoherent thought! I saw thee plainly today, disheveled and highly at your majesty, and wrote what I seem fit a worthy dedication. No worth a dedication! Thou hide infinity in the miniscule – why, look at yonder tree, the nearest to your eye. That tree contains more life than words this page. And if that life computed to a larger atmosphere around, the world would crowd as quickly as the extinguishment of a candle set neglected in the wind. We as Superiors depreciate this magnitude by the essence of its sightless inexistence, naming Minors inconsiderable due to their insubstantial height alone. Only you, Nature, knoweth what they are. Life is not dispensable by terms of other life. If air were judge of life and death, would not its modulations bring about extinction? So too the mindful mass determines what he keeps by how large his foot and small the back of his enemy are. As atop that day explained, its various scents and wonders seemed a whole, unpredicted by an individual law, and rather ordained by a universal existence, plotted merely for our being, and our roam upon its atmospheric purity. Universal peace was not founded on its prolificacy: it was a concept attained by those of momentary insight into its very elusive existence. And nowhere but in heart or in Nature has that moment come about.