Читать книгу Revisiting the Earth - James Langdon Hill - Страница 13

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The day is blue above, without a cloud. Will you walk with me through our village, gentle reader? We will begin at the handsome open square. Now as we advance my heart leaps at the sight of my birthplace. What a pretty location it is! Here is "the cot of my father:" "In youth it sheltered me." It is the "loved spot which my infancy knew." "How dear to my heart" is this "scene of my childhood." Happy childhood thus early blessed with blessings hereditary to all after hours! There is no place so suggestive and interesting in our adult years as that in which we began life. It is one of those exquisite situations which paint their own picture insensibly in the memory while you look on them, natural, daguerreotypes, as it were. Considered only as a house, it left some things to be desired but it is never to be considered only as a house. Why is it that we thus love the place of our birth? Why have all men done the same? The son of the mist, in Scott, in his dying hour, begged that he might be turned so that his eyes could rest once more upon his native hills and close with their latest vision fixed there. Why did the hero of Virgil, in his death hour, manifest his love for the place of his birth which is so beautifully narrated by that immortal bard? It is an instinct, which gives to it a place in the human heart, and such an expression in human thought. Like poetry it is born with us, not made. There probably is no stronger feeling in us than that of attachment to our first home. A man transplanted to another field may have succeeded well. His condition may have been vastly improved and yet he may have drooped without apparent cause, in his temporary home, pining for those days which were passed in the Eden of his life. I could not get enough of the place. Must I leave thee, dear sacred spot, how can I leave thee? My heart was full and the tears started to my eyes as I gazed around upon every object. The words of my earliest progenitor, on leaving our ancestral garden, as quoted by Milton, came to me, "Must I leave thee, paradise?"