We sit beneath their orchard trees,
We hear, like them, the hum of bees,
And rustle of the bladed corn.
Who can see the first daffodils of spring without feeling a sort of
spiritual festival that the beauty of the flower alone cannot explain? The
memory of all the springs of the past is in their dancing plumes, and the
assurance of all the springs to come. They link us up with the pageant of
nature, and with the immortals of our kind--with Wordsworth watching them
in "sprightly dance" by Ullswater, with Herrick finding in them the sweet
image of the beauty and transience of life, with Shakespeare greeting them
"in the sweet o' the year" by Avon's banks long centuries ago.
And in this sensitiveness of memory to external suggestion there is
infinite variety. It is not a collective memory that is awakened, but a
personal memory. That bit of seaweed opened many windows in us, but they
all looked out on different scenes and reminded us of something individual
and inexplicable, of something which is a part of that ultimate loneliness
that belongs to all of us.
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