Yonder a steam-plough pants
up the hill, groaning with its own strength, yet all that strength and
might of wheels, and piston, and chains, cannot drag from the earth one
single blade like these. Force cannot make it; it must grow--an easy word
to speak or write, in fact full of potency. It is this mystery of growth
and life, of beauty, and sweetness, and colour, starting forth from the
clods that gives the corn its power over me. Somehow I identify myself
with it; I live again as I see it. Year by year it is the same, and when
I see it I feel that I have once more entered on a new life. And I think
the spring, with its green corn, its violets, and hawthorn-leaves, and
increasing song, grows yearly dearer and more dear to this our ancient
earth. So many centuries have flown! Now it is the manner with all
natural things to gather as it were by smallest particles. The merest
grain of sand drifts unseen into a crevice, and by-and-by another; after
a while there is a heap; a century and it is a mound, and then every one
observes and comments on it. Time itself has gone on like this; the years
have accumulated, first in drifts, then in heaps, and now a vast mound,
to which the mountains are knolls, rises up and overshadows us.
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