His heart long seemed dusty and parched for want of feeling, and he frequented
a hill, where the pores of his soul opened to a new air. "Lying down on the grass,
I spoke in my soul to the earth, the sun, the air and the distant sea.... I desired to
have its strength, its mystery and glory. I addressed the sun, desiring the sole
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 color and
sweetness. The rich blue of the unobtainable flower of the sky drew my soul
toward it, and there it rested, for pure color is the rest of the heart. By all these I
prayed. I felt an emotion of the soul beyond all definition; prayer is a puny thing
to it." He prayed by the thyme; by the earth; the flowers which he touched; the
dust which he let fall through his fingers; was filled with "a rapture, an ecstasy,
an inflatus. With this inflatus I prayed.... I hid my face in the grass; I was wholly
prostrated; I lost myself in the wrestle.... I see now that what I labored for was
soul life, more soul learning." After gazing upward he would turn his face into
the grass, shutting out everything with hands each side, till he felt down into the
earth and was absorbed in it, whispering deep down to its center. Every natural
impression, trees, insects, air, clouds, he used for prayer, "that my soul might be
more than the cosmos of life." His "Lyra" prayer was to live a more exalted and
intense soul life; enjoy more bodily pleasure and live long and find power to
execute his designs. He often tried, but failed for years to write at least a meager
account of these experiences. He felt himself immortal just as he felt beauty. He
was in eternity already; the supernatural is only the natural misnamed. As he lay
face down on the grass, seizing it with both hands, he longed for death, to be
burned on a pyre of pine wood on a high hill, to have his ashes scattered wide
and broadcast, to be thrown into the space he longed for while living, but he
feared that such a luxury of resolution into the elements would be too costly.
Thus his naked mind, close against naked mother Nature, wrested from her the
conviction of soul, immortality, deity, under conditions as primitive as those of
the cave man, and his most repeated prayer was "Give me the deepest soul life."
In other moods he felt the world outré-human, and his mind could by no twist be
fitted to the cosmos. Ugly, designless creatures caused him to cease to look for
deity in nature, where all happens by chance. He at length concluded there is
something higher than soul and above deity, and better than God, for which he
searched and labored. He found favorite thinking places, to which he made
pilgrimages, where he "felt out into the depths of the ether." His frame could not
bear the labor his heart demanded. Work of body was his meat and drink. "Never
have I had enough of it. I wearied long before I was satisfied, and weariness did
not bring a cessation of desire, the thirst was still there. I rode; I used the ax; I