Many, many years ago TODAY, I lost my mother to her battle with cancer. I spent some time going through her scrapbook today and found one of her writings that I would like to share....she had quite a few and most have life lessons to tell, as does this one. It will have no real meaning to anyone but me, but sharing anyway. Still missing her today..... NATURE: How many of us have wished in our hearts to translate into our language the song of the newly-come birds in the spring? We listen and find their meaning, and yet we cannot express it. We wish that we might understand their tones as words, and yet would these same tones mean as much to us if we could translate them literally? Would the actual words thrill us as much as does the translation our feelings give them? We enjoy these notes doubly because they are unreachable and we can only give them a meaning colored by our own feelings. To quote Emerson....The stars awaken a certain reverence because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort a secret and lose his curiosity by finding out all his perfection. We pass over some smoothly rounded little hills many times and have no feeling, save an inclination to hurry on homeward; and then we pass over that hill on a glimmering afternoon when we are still tingling with the joy of a recent triumph and we are suddenly struck by its beauty, its exulting beauty - now a satisfyingly smooth little mount of success. If, on reaching home, we find a poem written on this same hill by a poet who stood at its foot just after losing his dearest friend, are we thrilled or satisfied? Indeed, no. We are very disappointed and the hill does not seem the same that we gazed at a short while ago. It is robbed of the bright halo of joy with which we saw it earlier. A certain sight or sound does not thrill one simply because it is beautiful, but it thrills according to the mood through which one sees or hears it. Just so red glasses turn the whole landscape a rosy hue, Emerson quite truly said nature always wears the colors of the spirit. - - Margaret Trobaugh ( circa 1935)
Posted on: Mon, 17 Mar 2014 20:06:38 +0000
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