Boyhood's end
Language: English
What, then, did I want? What did I ask to have? If the question had been put
to me then, and if I had been capable of expressing what was in me, I should
have replied: I want only to keep what I have. To rise each morning and look
out on the sky and the grassy dew-wet Earth, from day to day, from year to
year. To watch each June and July for spring, to feel the same old sweet
surprise and delight at th' appearance of each familiar flower, ev'ry
new-born insect, ev'ry bird returned once more from the north. To listen in
a trance of delight to the wild notes of the golden plover coming once more
to the great plain, flying south, flock succeeding flock the whole day long.
Oh, those wild beautiful cries of the golden plover! I could exclaim with
Hafiz with but one word changed: If after a thousand years that sound should
float o'er my tomb, my bones uprising in their gladness would dance in the
sepulchre. To climb trees and put my hand down in the deep hot nest of the
Bienteveo and feel the hot eggs, the five long-pointed cream coloured eggs,
with choc'late spots and splashes at the larger end. To lie on a grassy
bank, with the blue water between me and beds of tall bulrushes, list'ning
to the mysterious sounds of the wind and of hidden rails and coots and
courlands conversing together in strange human-like tones; to let my sight
dwell and feast on the camaloté flower amid its floating masses of moist
vivid green leaves, the large almanda-like flower of a purest divine yellow
that, when plucked, leaves you with nothing but a green stem in your hand.
To ride at noon on the hottest days when the whole Earth is a-glitter with
illusory water and see the cattle and horses in thousands cov'ring the plain
at their watering places, to visit some haunt of large birds at that still,
hot hour and see storks, ibises, grey herons, egrets of a dazzling whiteness
and rose-coloured spoon-bills and flamingoes standing in the shallow water
in which their motionless forms are reflected. To lie on my back on the
rust-brown grass in January, to gaze up at the wide hot whity-blue sky,
peopled with millions and myriads of glist'ning balls of thistledown, ever
floating by. To gaze and gaze, until they are to me living things, and I, in
an ecstasy am with them, floating in that immense shining void!
Authorship
by William Henry Hudson (1841-1922)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkveW_I7xD0&NR=1http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Az8AddWr ... re=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzmQlqdc ... re=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4GdYgPnRAQ