If by the training of a lifetime
one could succeed in producing one continuous page of perfect cadence,
it would be a life well spent, and such a literary artist would fall
short of Nature's standard in quantity only, not in quality.
It is one sign of our weakness, also, that we commonly assume Nature to
be a rather fragile and merely ornamental thing, and suited for a model
of the graces only. But her seductive softness is the last climax of
magnificent strength. The same mathematical law winds the leaves around
the stem and the planets round the sun. The same law of crystallization
rules the slight-knit snow-flake and the hard foundations of the earth.
The thistle-down floats secure upon the same summer zephyrs that are
woven into the tornado. The dew-drop holds within its transparent cell
the same electric fire which charges the thunder-cloud. In the softest
tree or the airiest waterfall, the fundamental lines are as lithe and
muscular as the crouching haunches of a leopard; and without a pencil
vigorous enough to render these, no mere mass of foam or foliage,
however exquisitely finished, can tell the story. Lightness of touch is
the crowning test of power.
Yet Nature does not work by single spasms only. That chestnut spray is
not an isolated and exhaustive effort of creative beauty: look upward
and see its sisters rise with pile above pile of fresh and stately
verdure, till tree meets sky in a dome of glorious blossom, the whole as
perfect as the parts, the least part as perfect as the whole.
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