The gay sun made streams
of silver fire shoot from the polished brackens and sorrel, the purple
geraniums gleamed like scattered jewels, and the birds seemed to be
joyful in presence of that manifold beauty--joyful as the quiet human
being who watched them all. And the little fishes in the shallows would
have their fun as well. They darted hither and thither; the spiny
creatures which the schoolboy loves built their queer nests among the
waterweeds; and sometimes a silly adventurer--alarmed by the majestic
approach of a large fish--would rush on to the loamy bank at the shallow
end of the lake and wriggle piteously in hopeless failure. The
afternoons were divinely restful by the varied shores of the limpid
lake. Sometimes as the sun sloped there might come hollow blasts of wind
that had careered for a brief space over the woods; but the brooding
heat, the mastering silence, the feeling that multifarious quiescent
living things were ready to start into action, all took the senses with
somnolence. That drowsy joy, that soothing silence which seemed only
intensified by the murmur of bees and the faint gurgle of water, were
like medicine to the soul; and it seemed that the conception of Nirvana
became easily understood as the delicious open-air reverie grew more and
more involved and vague.
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