The Story of My Heart
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Richard Jefferies >> The Story of My Heart
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7 THE STORY OF MY HEART
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY
by RICHARD JEFFERIES
CHAPTER I
THE story of my heart commences seventeen years ago. In the glow
of youth there were times every now and then when I felt the
necessity of a strong inspiration of soulthought. My heart was
dusty, parched for want of the rain of deep feeling; my mind arid and dry,
for there is a dust which settles on the heart as well as that which falls
on a ledge. It is injurious to the mind as well as to the body to be always
in one place and always surrounded by the same circumstances. A species of
thick clothing slowly grows about the mind, the pores are choked, little
habits become a part of existence, and by degrees the mind is inclosed in a
husk.
When this began to form I felt eager to escape from it, to throw off the
heavy clothing, to drink deeply once more at the fresh fountations of life.
An inspiration--a long deep breath of the pure air of thought--could alone
give health to the heart.
There is a hill to which I used to resort at such periods. The labour of
walking three miles to it, all the while gradually ascending, seemed to
clear my blood of the heaviness accumulated at home. On a warm summer day
the slow continued rise required continual effort, which caried away the
sense of oppression. The familiar everyday scene was soon out of sight; I
came to other trees, meadows, and fields; I began to breathe a new air and
to have a fresher aspirationn. I restrained my soul till reached the sward
of the hill; psyche, the soul that longed to be loose. I would write psyche
always instead of soul to avoid meanings
which have become attached to the word soul, but it is awkward to do so.
Clumsy inddeed are all words the moment the wooden stage of commonplace life
is left. I restrained psyche, my soul, till I reached and put my foot on
the grass at the beginning of the green hill itself. Moving up the sweet
short turf, at every step my heart seemed to obtain a wider horizon of
feeling; with every inhalation of rich pure air, a deeper desire. The very
light of the sun was whiter and more brilliant here. By the time I had
reached the summit I had entirely forgotten the petty circumstances and the
annoyances of existence. I felt myself, myself. There was an intrenchment
on the summit, and going down into the fosse I walked round it slowly to
recover breath. On the south-western side there was
a spot where the outer bank had partially slipped, leaving a
gap. There the view was over a broad plain, beautiful with
wheat, and inclosed by a perfect amphitheatre of green hills.
Through these hills there was one narrow groove, or pass,
southwards, where the white clouds seemed to close in the
horizon. Woods hid the scattered hamlets and farmhouses, so
that I was quite alone.I was utterly alone with the sun and the earth.
Lying down on the grass, I spoke in my soul to the earth, the sun, the air,
and the distant sea far beyond sight. I thought of the earth's firmness--I
felt it bear me up: through the grassy couch there came an influence as if I
could feel the great earth speaking to me. I thought of the wandering
air--its pureness, which is its beauty; the air touched me and gave me
something of itself. I spoke to the sea: though so far, in my mind I saw
it, green at the rim of the earth and blue in deeper ocean;I desired to have
its strength, its mystery and glory. Then I addressed the sun, desiring the
soul equivalent of
his light and brilliance, his endurance and unwearied race. I turned to the
blue heaven over, gazing into its depth, inhaling its exquisite colour and
sweetness. The rich blue of the unattainable flower of the sky drew my soul
towards it, and there it rested, I for pure colour is rest of heart. By all
these I prayed; I felt an emotion of the soul beyond all definition; prayer
is a puny thing to it, and the word is a rude sign to the feeling, but I
know no other.By the blue heaven, by the rolling sun bursting through
untrodden space, a new ocean of ether every day unveiled. By the fresh and
wandering air encompassing the world; by the sea sounding on the shore--the
green sea white-flecked at the margin and the deep ocean; by the strong
earth under me. Then, returning, I prayed by the
sweet thyme, whose little flowers I touched with my hand ; by the slender
grass; by the crumble of dry chalky earth I took up and let fall through my
fingers. Touching the crumble of earth, the blade of grass, the thyme
flower, breathing the earth-encircling air, thinking of the sea and the sky,
holding
out my hand for the sunbeams to touch it, prone on the sward in token of
deep reverence, thus I prayed that I might touch to the unutterable
existence infinitely higher than deity.
With all the intensity of feeling which exalted me, all the intense
communion I held with the earth, the sun and sky, the stars hidden by the
light, with the ocean--in no manner can the thrilling depth of these
feelings be written--with these I prayed, as if they were the keys of an
instrument, of an organ, with which I swelled forth the note of my soul,
redoubling my own voice by their power. The great sun burning with light;
the strong earth, dear earth; the warm sky; the pure air; the thought of
ocean; the inexpressible beauty of all filled
me with a rapture, an ecstasy, and inflatus. With this inflatus, too, I
prayed. Next to myself I came and recalled myself, my bodily existence. I
held out my hand, the sunlight
gleamed on the skin and the iridescent nails; I recalled the mystery and
beauty of the flesh. I thought of the mind with which I could see the ocean
sixty miles distant, and gather to myself its glory. I thought of my inner
existence, that consciousness which is called the soul. These, that is,
myself-- I threw into the balance to weight the prayer the heavier. My
strength of body, mind and soul, I flung into it; I but forth my strength; I
wrestled and laboured, and toiled in might of prayer. The prayer, this
soul-emotion was in itself-not for an object-it was a passion. I hid my
face in the grass, I was wholly prostrated, I lost myself in the wrestle, I
was rapt and carried away.
Becoming calmer, I returned to myself and thought, reclining in rapt
thought, full of aspiration, steeped to the lips of my soul in desire. I
did not then define, or analyses, or understand this. I see now that what I
laboured for was soul-life, more soul-nature, to be exalted, to be full of
soul-learning. Finally I rose, walked half a mile or so along the summit of
the hill eastwards, to soothe myself and come to the common ways of life
again. Had any shepherd accidentally seen me lying on the turf, he would
only have thought that I was resting a few minutes; I made no outward show.
Who could have imagined the whirlwind of passion that was going on within me
as I reclined there! I was greatly exhausted when I reached home.
Occasionally I went upon the hill deliberately, deeming it good to do so;
then, again, this craving carried me away up there of
itself. Though the principal feeling was the same, there were
variations in the mode in which it affected me.
Sometimes on lying down on the sward I first looked up at the
sky, gazing for a long time till I could see deep into the azure
and my eyes were full of the colour; then I turned my face to
the grass and thyme, placing my hands at each side of my face
so as to shut out everything and hide myself. Having drunk deeply of the
heaven above and felt the most glorious beauty of
the day, and remembering the old, old, sea, which (as it seemed
to me) was but just yonder at the edge, I now became lost, and
absorbed into the being or existence of the universe. I felt
down deep into the earth under, and high above into the sky, and
farther still to the sun and stars. Still farther beyond the stars into the
hollow of space, and losing thus my separateness of being came to seem like
a part of the whole. Then I whisper-ed to the earth beneath, through the gr
ass and thyme, down into the depth of its ear, and again up to the starry
space hid behind the blue of day. Travelling in an instant across the
distant sea, I saw as if with actual vision the palms and
cocoanut trees, the bamboos of India, and the cedars of the extreme south.
Like a lake with islands the ocean lay before me, as clear and vivid as the
plain beneath in the midst of the amphitheatre of hills.
With the glory of the great sea, I said, with the firm, solid,
and sustaining earth; the depth, distance, and expanse of ether;
the age, tamelessness, and ceaseless motion of the ocean; the
stars, and the unknown in space; by all those things which are
most powerful known to me, and by those which exist, but of which I have no
idea whatever, I pray. Further, by my own soul, that secret existence which
above all other things bears the nearest resemblance to the ideal of spirit,
infinitely nearer than earth, sun, or star. Speaking by an inclination
towards, not in words, my soul prays that I may have something from each of
these, that I may gather a flower from them, that I may have in myself the
secret and meaning of the earth, the golden sun, the light, the foam-flecked
sea. Let my soul become enlarged; I am not enough ; I am little and
contemptible. I desire a great-ness of soul, an irradiance of mind, a
deeper insight, a broader
hope. Give me power of soul, so that I may actually effect by
its will that which I strive for.
In winter, though I could not then rest on the grass, or stay
long enough to form any definite expression, I still went up to the hill
once now and then, for it seemed that to merely visit the spot repeated all
that I had previously said. But it was not only then.
In summer I went out into the fields, and let my soul inspire
these thoughts under the trees, standing against the trunk, or looking up
through the branches at the sky. If trees could speak, hundreds of them
would say that I had had these soul-emotions under them. Leaning against the
oak's massive
trunk, and feeling the rough bark and the lichen at my back, looking
southwards over the grassy fields, cowslip-yellow, at the woods on the
slope, I thought my desire of deeper soul-life. Or under the green firs,
looking upwards, the sky was more deeply blue at their tops; then the brake
fern was unroll-
ing, the doves cooing, the thickets astir, the late ash-leaves
coming forth. Under the shapely rounded elms, by the hawthorn bushes and
hazel, everywhere the same deep desire for the soul-nature; to have from all
green things and from the sunlight the inner meaning which was not known to
them, that I might be full of light as the woods of the sun's rays. Just to
touch the lichened bark of a tree, or the end of a spray projecting
over the path as I walked, seemed to repeat
the same prayer in me.
The long-lived summer days dried and warmed the turf in the meadows. I used
to lie down in solitary corners at full length on my back, so as to feel the
embrace of the earth. The grass stood high above me, and the shadows of the
tree-branches danced on my face. I looked up at the sky, with halfclosed
eyes to bear the dazzling light. Bees buzzed over me, sometimes a butterfly
passed,
there was a hum in the air, greenfinches sang in the hedge. Gradually
entering into the intense life of the summer days--a life which burned
around as if every grass blade and leaf were a torch--I came to feel the
longdrawn life of the earth back into the dimmest past, while the sun of the
moment was warm on me. Sesostris on the most ancient sands of the south,in
ancient, ancient days, was conscious of himself and of the sun. This
sunlight linked me through the ages to that past consciousness. From all
the ages my soul desired to take that soul-life which had flowed through
them as the sunbeams had continually poured on earth. As the hot sands take
up the heat, so would I take up that soul-energy. Dreamy in appearance, I
was breathing full of
existence; I was aware of the grass blades, the flowers, the leaves on hawth
orn and tree. I seemed to live more largely through them, as if each were a
pore through which I drank.
The grasshoppers called and leaped, the greenfinches
sang, the blackbirds happily fluted, all the air hummed with
life. I was plunged deep in existence, and with all that
existence I prayed.
Through every grass blade in the thousand, thousand grasses;
through the million leaves, veined and edge-cut, on bush and
tree; through the song-notes and the marked feathers of the
birds; through the insects' hum and the colour of the butterflies; through
the soft warm air, the flecks of clouds
dissolving--I used them all for prayer. With all the energy the
sunbeams had poured unwearied on the earth since Sesostris was
conscious of them on the ancient sands; with all the life that
had been lived by vigorous man and beauteous woman since first
in dearest Greece the dream of the gods was woven; with all the
soul-life that had flowed a long stream down to me, I prayed
that I might have a soul more than equal to, far beyond my conception of,
these things of the past, the present, and the fulness of all life. Not
only equal to these, but beyond, higher, and more powerful than I could
imagine. That I might take from all their energy, grandeur, and beauty, and
gather it into me. That my soul might be more than the cosmos of
life.
I prayed with the glowing clouds of sun-set and the soft light of the first
star coming through the violet sky. At night with the stars, according to
the season : now with the Pleiades, now with the Swan or burning Sirius, and
broad Orion's whole
constellation, red Aldebaran, Arcturus, and the Northern Crown;
with the morning star, the lightbringer, once now and then when
I saw it, a white-gold ball in the violet-purple sky, or framed
about with pale summer vapour floating away as red streaks shot
horizontally in the east. A diffused saffron ascended into
the luminous upper azure. The disk of the sun rose over the
hill, fluctuating with throbs of light; his chest heaved in
fervour of brilliance. All the glory of the sunrise filled me with broader
and furnace-like vehemence of prayer. That I might have the deepest of
soul-life, the deepest of all, deeper far than all this greatness of the
visible universe and even of the invisible; that I might have a fulness of
soul till now unknown, and utterly beyond my own conception.
In the deepest darkness of the night the same thought rose in my
mind as in the bright light of noontide. What is there which I
have not used to strengthen the same emotion?
CHAPTER II
SOMETIMES I went to a deep, narrow valleyin the hills, silent and solitary.
The sky crossed from side to side, like a roof supported on two walls of
green. Sparrows chirped in the wheat at the verge above, their calls
falling like the twittering of swallows from the air. There was no other
sound. The short grass was dried grey as it grew by the heat; the sun hung
over the narrow vale as if it had been put there by hand. Burning, burning,
the sun glowed on the sward at the footof the slope where these thoughts
burned into me. How many, many years, how many cycles of years, how many
bundles ofcycles of years, had the sun glowed down thus on that hollow?
Since it was formed how long? Since it was worn and shaped,groove-like, in
the flanks of the hills by mighty forces which had ebbed. Alone with the
sun which glowed on the work when it was done, I saw back through space to
the old time of tree-ferns, of the lizard
flying through the air, the lizard-dragon wallowing in sea foam, the
mountainous creatures, twice-elephantine, feeding on land; all the crooked
sequence of life. The dragon-fly which passed me traced a continuous
descent from the fly marked on stone in those days. The immense time lifted
me like a wave rolling under a boat; my mind seemed to raise itself as the
swell of the cycles came; it felt strongwith the power of the ages. With
all thattime and power I prayed: that I might have in my soul the
intellectual part of it; theidea, the thought. Like a shuttle the mind shot
to and fro the past and the present, in an instant.
Full to the brim of the wondrous past, I felt the wondrous
present. For the day--the very moment I breathed, that second of time then
in the valley, was as marvellous, as grand, as all
that had gone before. Now, this moment was the wonder and the
glory.Now,this moment was exceedingly wonder-
ful. Now, this moment give me all the
thought, all the idea, ali the soul expressed in the cosmos
around me. Give me still more, for the interminable universe,
past and present, is but earth; give me the unknown soul, wholly
apart from it, the soul of which I know only that when I touch
the ground, when the sunlight touches my hand,it is not there. Therefore
the heart looks into space to be away from earth. With all the cycles, and
the sunlight streaming through them, with all that is meant by the present,
I thought in the deep vale and prayed.
There was a secluded spring to which I sometimes went to drink
the pure water, lifting it in the hollow of my hand. Drinking
the lucid water, clear as light itself in solution, I absorbed
the beauty and purity of it. I drank the thought of the element; I desired
soul-nature pure and limpid. When I saw the
sparkling dew on the grass--a rainbow broken into drops--it called up the
same thought-prayer. The stormy wind whose sudden twists laid the trees on
the ground woke the same feeling; my heart shouted with it. The soft summer
air which entered when I
opened my window in the morning breathed the same sweet desire.
At night, before sleeping, I always looked out at the shadowy trees, the
hills looming indistinctly in the dark, a star seen between the drifting
clouds; prayer of soul-life always. I chose the highest room, bare and
gaunt, because as I sat at work I could look out and see more of the wide
earth, more of the dome of the sky, and could think my desire through these.
When the crescent of the new moon shone, all the old thoughts were renewed.
All the succeeding incidents of the year repeated my prayer as
I noted them. The first green leaf on the hawthorn, the first
spike of meadow grass, the first song of the nightingale, the
green ear of wheat. I spoke it with the ear of wheat as the sun
tinted it golden; with the whitening barley; again with the red gold spots
of autumn on the beech, the buff oak leaves, and the gossamer dew-weighted.
All the larks over the green corn sang it for me, all the dear swallows; the
green leaves rustled it; the green brookflags waved it; the swallows took it
with them to repeat it for me in distant lands. By the running brook I
meditated it; a flash of sunlight here in the curve, a flicker yonderon the
ripples, the birds bathing in the sandy shallow, the rush of falling water.
As the brook ran winding through the
meadow, so one thought ran winding through my days.
The sciences I studied never checked it for a moment; nor did the books of
old philosophy. The sun was stronger than science;
the hills more than philosophy. Twice circumstances gave me a brief view of
the sea then the passion rose tumultuous as the
waves. It was very bitter to me to leave the sea.
Sometimes I spent the whole day walking over the hills
searching for it; as if the labour of walking would force it
from the ground. I remained in the woods for hours, among the
ash sprays and the fluttering of the ring-doves at their nests,
the scent of pines here and there, dreaming my prayer.
My work was most uncongenial and useless, but even then sometimes a
gleam of sunlight on the wall, the buzz of a bee at the window, would bring
the thought to me. Only to make me miserable, for it was a waste of golden
time while the rich sunlight streamed on hill and plain. There was a
wrenching of the mind, a straining of the mental sinews; I was forced to do
this, my mind was yonder. Weariness, exhaustion, nerve-illness often
ensued. The insults which are showered on poverty, long struggle of labour,
the heavy pressure of circumstances, the unhappiness, only stayed the
expression of the feeling. It was always there. Often in the streets of
London, as the red sunset flamed over the houses, the old thought, the old
prayer, came.
Not only in grassy fields with green leaf and running brook did
this constant desire find renewal. More deeply still with
living human beauty; the perfection of form, the simple fact of
form, ravished and always willravish me away. In this lies the outcome and
end of all the loveliness of sunshine and green leaf, of flowers, pure
water, and sweet air. This is embodiment and highest ex-pression; the
scattered, uncertain, and designless loveliness of tree and sunlight brought
to shape. Through this beauty Iprayed deepest and longest, and down to this
hour. The shape--the divine idea of that shape--the swelling muscle or the
dreamy limb, strong sinew or curve of bust, Aphrodite or Hercules, it is the
same. That I may have the soul-life, the soul-nature, let divine beauty
bring to me divine soul. Swart Nubian, white Greek, delicate Italian,
massive Scandinavian, in all the exquisite pleasure the form gave, and
gives, to me immediately becomes intense prayer.
If I could have been in physical shape like these, how
despicable in comparison I am; to be shapely of form is so
infinitely beyond wealth, power, fame, all that ambition can give, that
these are dust before it. Unless of the human form, no pictures hold me;
the rest are flat surfaces. So, too, with
the other arts, they are dead; the potters, the architects,
meaningless, stony, and some repellent, like the cold touch of
porcelain. No prayer with these. Only the human form in art
could raise it, and most in statuary. I have seen so little
good statuary, it is a regret to me; still, that I have is
beyond all other art. Fragments here, a bust yonder, the
broken pieces brought from Greece, copies, plaster casts, a
memory of an Aphrodite, of a Persephone, of an Apollo, that is
all; but even drawings of statuary will raise the prayer.
These statues were like myself full of a thought, for ever
about to burst forth as a bud, yet silent in the same attitude.
Give me to live the soul-life they express. The smallest
fragment of marble carved in the shape of the human arm will wake the desire
I felt in my hill-prayer.
Time went on; good fortune and success never for an instant
deceived me that they were in themselves to be sought; only my
soul-thought was worthy. Further years bringing much suffering,
grinding the very life out; new troubles, renewed insults, loss
of what hard labour had earned, the bitter question: Is it not
better to leap into the sea? These, too, have made no
impression; constant still to the former prayer my mind endures.
It was my chief regret that I had not endeavoured to write these things, to
give expression to this passion. I am now trying, but I see that I shall
only in part succeed.
The same prayer comes to me at this very hour. It is now less
solely associated with the sun and sea, hills, woods, or
beauteous human shape. It is always within. It requires no waking; no
renewal; it is always with me. I am it; the fact of my existence expresses
it.After a long interval I came to the hills again, this time by the coast.
I found a deep hollow on the side of a great hill, a green concave opening
to the sea, where I could rest and think in perfect quiet. Behind me were
furze bushes dried by the heat; immediately in front dropped the steep
descent of the bowl-like hollow which received and brought up to me the
faint sound of the summer waves. Yonder lay the immense plain of sea, the
palest green under the continued sunshine, as though the heat had evaporated
the colour from it; there was no distinct horizon, a heat-mist inclosed it
and looked farther away than the horizon would have done. Silence and
sunshine, sea and hill gradually brought my mind into the condition of
intense prayer. Day after day, forhours at a time, I came there, my
soul-desire always the same. Presently I began to consider how I could put
a part of that prayer into form, giving it an object. Could I bring it into
such a shape as would admit of actually working upon the lines it indicated
for any good ?
One evening, when the bright white star in Lyra was shining
almost at the zenith over me, and the deep concave was the more
profound in the dusk, I formulated it into three divisions.
First, I desired that I might do or find something to exalt the
soul, something to enable it to live its own life, a more
powerful existence now. Secondly, I desired to be able to do something for
the flesh, to make a discovery or perfect a method by which the fleshly body
might enjoy more pleasure, longer life, and suffer less pain. Thirdly, to
construct a more flexible engine with which to carry into execution the
design of the will. I called this the Lyra prayer, to distinguish it from
the far deeper emotion in which the soul was alone
concerned.
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