New-York tribune., 1918-04-07

ut WAS an old belief of the poets
and the common people that nature
was curously sympathetic toward
human beings at certain great crises.
Comets farcd and the sun was darkcned
at the death of a great man. Even the
death of friend was supposed to bow
nature with despair; and Milton, in
"Lycidas," mourned the friend he had
lost in what nowadays seems to us the
pasteboard hyperbole:
The willows and the hazel copses green
Shall now no more be seen
Tanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays.
1t may be contended that Milton was
here speaking not of nature, but Of his
own vision of nature, and certainly one
cannot help reading ones own joys and
sorrows into the face Of the earth.
When the lover in "Maud'' atfirms:
A livelier emerald twinked in the grass,
he states a fact He utters a truth of
the eye and heart. The wonder of the
world resides in him who sees it. The
earth becomes new place to a man
who has fallen in love or who has just
returned to it from the edge of the
grave. 1t is as though he saw the flow
ers for the first time Larks ascending
make the planet ball of music for
him. He may we'll begin to lie about
nature, for he has seen it for the first
time. Experience is not long in warning
him, however, that it is he and not the
world that has changed He meets
funeral in the midsummer of his hap
piness, and larks sing the same songs
above the fields whether it is the lover
or the mourner that goes by.
The continuity of nature is not brok-
ell either for our gladness or our grief
Mr.. Hardy frequently introduces the
mournful drip of rain into his picture
Of men and women unhappily mated.
But the rain is not at the beck and call
of the unhappy like that The unhappy
would still be unhappy though they were
in q cherry orchard on the loveiest
morning of the year. The happy would
still be happy though St. Swithin's Day
were streaming in floods down the Win
dow panes. What man does not know
what it is to be happy watching the rain
drops racing down the glass and hear
ing the gutter chatterng like hedge
full of sparrows or tinkling like bell 4?
Who is there, on the other hand, who
has not found, and been perplexed to
find, the world going on its way in full
song and bloom on day that has seemed
to him to Garl.en all human experience.
P URNS'S reproach to the Indifferent
a. earth has often been quoted as an
expression of this realization that nature
does not mind:
How can ye sing, yc little birds,
And l sac weary, fu' O care?
Nature, we discover, passes us and
our sorrows by. We are of little ac-
count to the race Of birds or the race
of trees or the race of flowers or the
race of stars. We are of little account,
for that matter, to the race of men.
The end of Hamlet is not the end even
of kingdom. Fortinbras comes upon
the scene and life goes on Our mourn
ings are only Interruptions. The ranks
of the procession close up and little Is
changed. Even the funeral of a king
Is as rule less an occasion for grief
than spectacle for the curious. The
crowd may have filled the streets all
night, but they did not forget to bring
their sandwiches and whiskey TASKS with
them. The theatres and the tea shops
and the public houses will be as full as
ever the next day.
And for the death of great author
not even the sweets shops will be closed.
The funeral ceremonies over the body
of Herbert Spencer drew a smaller