My thoughts went floating on vast and mystic currents as I sat today in solitude and half-shade by the creek—returning mainly to two principal centers. One of my cherish’d themes for a never-achiev’d poem has been the two impetuses of man and the universe—in the latter, creation’s incessant unrest,
18 exfoliation (Darwin’s evolution, I suppose). Indeed, what is Nature but change, in all its visible, and still more its invisible processes? Or what is humanity in its faith, love, heroism, poetry, even morals, but
emotion?