Somewhat of
the brightness and freshness of "the vision splendid" might
evaporate; but the mystic glow, the joy, the exaltation,
remained--and deepened--
"So was it when I was a child,
So is it now I am a man,
So may it be when I am old,
Or let me die"--
only that childlike fancy yields place to matured imagination.
And if this was so with Wordsworth, whose childhood was so
exceptional, still more shall we find it to be true of the average
child. The early freshness of the senses may be blunted; the
eager curiosity may be satiated; but where the nature remains
unspoilt, the sense of wonder and of joy will extend its range
and gain in fullness of content.
If we compare Kingsley's development, he was in a way a great
"boy" to the end--but a boy with a deepening sense of mystery
mellowing his character and his utterances. And thus it was that
he could say, looking back on his intercourse with the wonders
of nature: "I have long enjoyed them, never I can honestly say
alone, because when man was not with me I had companions in
every bee and flower and pebble, and never idle, because I
could not pass a swamp or a tuft of heather without finding in it
a fairy tale of which I could but decipher here and there a line or
two, and yet found them more interesting than all the books,
save one, which were ever written upon earth."
True, there is another range of experiences to be reckoned with,
such as that of Omar Khayyam--
"Yet ah that Spring should vanish with the Rose!
That Youth's sweet-scented manuscript should close!
The Nightingale that on the branches sang,
Ah whence, and whither flown again, who knows?"
Yes, but what might Omar have been with a nobler philosophy
of life, and a more wholesome self-restraint.
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