Above the World

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB.

MY gardener is stirring his fire of dry leaves and twigs, while I venture these observations. There are two ways of departure from this world. One is to soar above it so high that the landscape looks to us as it does to the eagle, while all cares and details of life are so far removed that it is as though they were not. Those who have adventured into the upper air, above the clouds, tell us that the spectacle is most enchanting; that, though the noises of pasture and farmyard, of lowing herds and bleating flocks, are distinctly audible, yet these sounds are so softened by distance that their harshness seems translated into melody, and even that measure of civilization which finds expression in the steam whistle or the factory bell becomes, by some sublimating process, if not mute to our senses, at least no longer a disturbing element.

Now, the other way of ascending from earth, when we have no wings for flight, is so to ignore the world and its belongings that they fade from beneath us, leaving us alone, and less conscious of that life we would not live than even when our physical selves are sailing in the aeronaut’s car above the clouds. In effect, the solid earth is melted away from around us.

I need not say, what every dreamer knows, that the time in which this ethereal ascension is best facilitated is the very early spring, — that interval which one might call the promise of spring, and which is heralded by strange subtle odors belonging to no plant or flower that I know, yet filling the breast with such glad forebodings as may have been borne from the Spice Islands to the first voyagers thither ; and when the gardener makes a burnt offering of all stray branches and errant leaves, ah, why does the crackling wood, in the open air, smell sweeter to us than all Araby the blest ? The exhaled metaphor is of youth, health, holiday. The dewy freshness of life’s morning, with its clouds, tears, sunshine, and wet grass, is brought home to us by a waft of odor which is not perfume save to the soul !

I am also reminded that at no other time of the year is man so superstitious, so blessedly credulous of whatever Fancy offers for his acceptance. This is the season of revival for those dear myths of the senses, the dim frequenters of some immemorial and totally elusive preëxistence, which we would, but cannot clearly recall. Shelley, who seems throughout the revolving year never quite to lose sight of this fascinating period, inquires : —

We cannot all be poets, but there are moments when, by a sort of supramundane flitting, we half discover which way the poets have gone ; and I am much obliged to my garden fire for lending Fancy a makeshift pair of wings.