Earth and Sky

In nature, as in art, it is the sky which makes the landscape. Given the identical fields, woods, and retreating hills, and every change of sky, every modulation of light, will produce a new landscape; in light and atmosphere are concealed those mysteries of colour, of distance, and of tone which clothe the changeless features of the visible world with infinite variety and charm. This fruitful marriage of the upper and the lower firmaments is perhaps the oldest fact known to men; it was the earliest discovery of the first observer, it still is the most illusive and beautiful mystery in nature. The most ancient mythologies began with it, the latest books of science and natural observation are still dealing with it. Myths that are older than history portray it in lofty symbolism or in splendid histories that embody the primitive ideals of divinity and humanity; the latest poets and painters would fain touch their verse or their canvas with some luminous gleam from the heart of this perpetual miracle. The unbroken procession of the seasons changes month by month the relations of earth and sky; day and night all the water-courses of the world rise in invisible moisture to a fellowship with the birds that have passed on swift wing above their currents; the great outlying seas, that sound the notes of their vast and passionate unrest upon the shores of every continent, are continually drawn upward to swell the invisible upper ocean which, out of its mighty life, feeds every green and fruitful thing upon the bosom of the earth. This movement of the oceans upon the continents through the illimitable channels of the sky is, in some ways, the most mysterious and the most sublime of those miracles which each day testify to the presence and majesty of that Spirit behind Nature of whom the greatest of modern poets thought when he wrote:

Thus at the roaring loom of time I ply
And weave for God the robe thou seest Him by.

The vast inland grain fields, that stretch in unbroken procession from horizon to horizon, have the seas at their roots not less truly than the fertile soil out of which they spring; the verdure upon the mountain ranges, that keep unbroken solitude at the heart of the continents, speaks forever of the distant oceans which nourish it, and spread it like a vesture over the barren heights. No traveller, deep in the recesses of the remotest inland, ever passes beyond the voice of that encircling ocean which never died out of the ears of the ancient Ulysses in the first Odyssey of wandering.

Two months ago the apple trees were white with the foam of the upper sea; to-day the roses have brought into my little patch of garden the hues with which sun and sea proclaimed their everlasting marriage in the twilight of yester even. In the deep, passionate heart of these splendid flowers, fragrant since they bloomed in Sappho's hand centuries ago, this sublime wedlock is annually celebrated; earth and sky meet and commingle in this miracle of colour and sweetness, and when I carry this lovely flower into my study all the poets fall silent; here is a depth of life, a radiant outcome from the heart of mysteries, a hint of unimagined beauty, such as they have never brought to me in all their seeking. They have had their visions and made them music; they have caught faint echoes of rushing seas and falling tides; the shadows of mountains have fallen upon them with low whisperings of unspeakable things hidden in the unexplored recesses of their solitudes; they have searched the limitless arch of heaven when it was sown with stars, and glittered like "an archangel full panoplied against a battle day;" but in all their quest the sublime unity of Nature, the fellowship of force with force, of sea with sky, of moisture with light, of form with colour, has found at their hands no such transcendent demonstration as this fragile rose, which to-night brings from the great temple to this little shrine the perfume and the royalty of obedience to the highest laws, and reverence for the divinest mysteries. Here sky and earth and sea meet in a union which no science can dissolve, because God has joined them together. Could I but penetrate the mystery which lies at the heart of this fragile flower, I should possess the secret of the universe; I should understand the ancient miracle which has baffled wisdom from the beginning and will not discover itself to the end of time.

If I permit my thought to rest upon this fragrant flower, to touch petal and stem and root, and unite them with the vast world in which, by a universal contribution of force, they have come to maturity, I find myself face to face with the oldest and the deepest questions men have ever sought to answer. Elements of earth and sea and sky are blended here in one of those forms of radiant and vanishing beauty with which the unseen life of Nature crowns the years in endless and inexhaustible profusion. As it budded and opened into full flower in the garden, how complete it seemed in itself, and how isolated from all other visible things! But in reality how dependent it was, how entirely the creation of forces as far apart as earth and sky! The great tide from the Unseen cast it for a moment into my possession; for an hour it has filled a human home with its far-brought sweetness; to-morrow it will fall apart and return whence it came. As I look into its heart of passionate colour, the whole visible universe, that seems so fixed and stable, becomes immaterial, evanescent, vanishing; it is no longer a permanent order of seas and continents and rounded skies; it is a vision painted by an unseen hand against a background of mystery. Dead, cold, unchangeable as I see it in the glimpses of a single hour, it becomes warm, vital, forever changing as I gaze upon it from the outlook of the centuries. It is the momentary creation of forces that stream through it in endless ebb and flow, that are to-day touching the sky with elusive splendour, and to-morrow springing in changeful loveliness from the depths of earth. The continents are transformed into the seas that encircle them; the seas rise into the skies that overarch them; the skies mingle with the earth, and send back from the uplifted faces of flowers greetings to the stars they have deserted. Mountains rise and sink in the sublime rhythm to which the movement of the universe is set; that song without words still audible in the sacred hour when the morning stars announce the day, and the birds match their tiny melodies with the universal harmony.

In the unbroken vision of the centuries all things are plastic and in motion; a divine energy surges through all; substantial for a moment here as a rock, fragile and vanishing there as a flower; but everywhere the same, and always sweeping onward through its illimitable channel to its appointed end. It is this vital tide on which the universe gleams and floats like a mirage of immutability; never the same for a single moment to the soul that contemplates it: a new creation each hour and to every eye that rests upon it. No dead mechanism moves the stars, or lifts the tides, or calls the flowers from their sleep; truly this is the garment of Deity, and here is the awful splendour of the Perpetual Presence. It is the old story of the Greek Proteus translated into universal speech. It is the song of the Persian poet:

The sullen mountain, and the bee that hums,
A flying joy, about its flowery base,
Each from the same immediate fountain comes,
And both compose one evanescent race.

There is no difference in the texture fine
That's woven through organic rock and grass,
And that which thrills man's heart in every line,
As o'er its web God's weaving fingers pass.

The timid flower that decks the fragrant field,
The daring star that tints the solemn dome,
From one propulsive force to being reeled;
Both keep one law and have a single home.