"To him who, in the love of Nature, holds communion with her visible forms, she speaks a various language. For his gayer hours she has a voice of gladness and a smile, and eloquence of beauty ; and she glides into his darker musings with a mild and healing sympathy, that steals away their sharpness ere he is aware.
At this season, man is instinctively wooed to the study of the myriad whisperings which await room in the store-house of his thought and love. All forms speak in tones omnipresent ; radically comprehended, however, only as the mortal or material yields to the Spiritual sense of Being.
While looking with the mortal eye of sense upon Nature's veiled face, Victor Hugo declared : "God is behind everything, but everything hides God." But when mortal sense waned and spiritual fact dawned,—"Woe, alas ! to the man who has only loved bodies, and shapes, and appearances ! Death will strip him of all that !" he cried.
