The simple perception of natural forms is a delight. (46) The influence of the forms and actions in nature is so needful to man, that in its lowest functions, it seems to lie on the confines of commodity and beauty. To the body and mind which have been cramped by noxious work or company, nature is medicinal and restores their tone. The tradesman, the attorney comes out of the din and craft of the street and sees the sky and the woods, and is a man again. In their eternal calm, he finds himself. The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough. (47) But in other hours, Nature satisfies the soul purely by its loveliness, and without any mixture of corporeal benefit. I see the spectacle of morning from the hilltop over against my house, from daybreak to sunrise, with emotions which an angel might share. The long slender bars of cloud float like fishes in the sea of crimson light. (48) From the earth, as a shore, I look out into that silent sea. I seem to share its rapid transformations; the active enchantment reaches my dust; and I dilate and conspire with the morning wind. How does Nature deify us with a few and cheap elements! Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous. The dawn is my Assyria; the sunset and moonrise my Paphos, and unimaginable realm of faerie; broad noon shall be my England of the senses and the understanding; the night shall be my Germany of mystic philosophy ad dreams. Not less excellent, except for our less susceptibility in the afternoon, was the charm, last evening of a January sunset. (49) The western clouds divided and subdivided themselves into pink flakes modulated with tints of unspeakable softness, and the air has so much life and sweetness that it was a pain to come within doors. What was it that nature would say? Was there no meaning in the live repose of the valley behind the mill, and which Homer or Shakespeare could not reform for me in words? (50) The leafless trees become spires of flame in the sunset; with the blue cast for their background, and the stars of the dead calices of flowers, and every withered stem and stubble rimed with frost, contribute something to the mute music.