DREAM PLACES.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 293, 11 December 1929, Page 24

DREAM PLACES.

The restless temperament is handicapped in communing with Nature. To enter into her life one needs to be able to be out of doors without doing any* thing in particular, content to tryst with Nature, to live in the breeze and the sunshine. Those who do not understand have often accused of idleness the great nature-lovers like Jefferies and Thoreau. A stone is still shown in Scotland where Sir Walter Scott would sit idle for hours; and Thoreau has tbjd how sometimes, forgetting his beans and hie ponds, he would sit niugiiig ''from the first flare of day till the west was red With the sunset," There was a great oak in the solitude of sunlit meadows to which Jefferies Would retire to "escape the loneliness of ordinary life." The sound in the freer tops would carry away hip thoughts into lofty dreams and hopes. There ho would dream and long for richer, fuller life. On the bare downs he would sit and wonder how the kestrels climbed the air, and how they could hang there so motiojv .-Jess, and where they w6nt when on strong wings they disappeared in the far distance. Tlie neighbours thought him idle and goorlfor nothing, and pointed with scorn at him lounging under trees or poking about in the hedgerows. But in that "wise passivencss" he was growing rich in ways unknown to them. Such an attitude seems the condition of reception, Wo must bo unhurried and still if we v would hear. Happy are we if we have some such "dreant place" set in some solitude of Nature-;—a tree, a hill, or streamside, a lonely, bit of shore, a. corner in a garden or on »• lonely- moor. One we know often'wcnfc'jh girlhood to where the mill stream famed the- river, or to a water-fall/hipheir?-lip the stream, for running wateiylntfn's, or 'waterfalls somehow fascinate her. ; and form her ideal solitude. Anbther,':'an older mail, had a little clearing' ho had made in a wood, overlooking a glorious- landscape-away to the sea. To that sanctuary, as he called it, he went daily for solitude and meditation. Ho found peace there, and felt the wonder at the heart of things. Another we knew used to go and stand on a wooden bridge across a lonely stream, The stream seemed to lead oil his thoughts as he gazed intently into the waters. He spent hours in that way, dreaming and thinking the long, long thoughts of youth.