If there were no
autumn, no winter, then spring and summer would lose, not all indeed,
yet an appreciable part of their sweet savour for us. Thus, as his
mind matured, Percy came to be very glad of the gradual changes of the
year. He found in them a rhythm, as he once described it in his diary;
and this he liked very much indeed. He was aware that in his own
character, with its tendency to waywardness, to caprice, to disorder,
there was an almost grievous lack of this _rhythmic_ quality. In the
sure and seemly progression of the months, was there not for him a
desirable exemplar, a needed corrective? He was so liable to moods in
which he rebelled against the performance of some quite simple duty,
some appointed task--moods in which he said to himself "H-ng it! I
will not do this," or "Oh, b-th-r! I shall not do that!" But it was
clear that Nature herself never spoke thus. Even as a passenger in
a frail barque on the troublous ocean will keep his eyes directed
towards some upstanding rock on the far horizon, finding thus inwardly
for himself, or hoping to find, a more stable equilibrium, a deeper
tranquillity, than is his, so did Percy daily devote a certain portion
of his time to quiet communion with the almanac.
There were times when he was sorely tempted to regret a little that
some of the feasts of the Church were "moveable.
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