And what then? Something is missed: but is nothing found? What is the year doing in the gravity, and monotony, and silence of Summer days? Our life is much like that of the year. It has its Spring and its Summer, its Autumn and its Winter. We, too, pass out of youth, and excitement, and impetuosity, and hope, into manhood, and gravity, and calmness--and disappointment. What, then, is the year doing in this stage of its life? If we look aside from our own experience to its example, what does that example teach us?
The question, “What is the year doing?” suggests the answer to our inquiries. The year _is doing_. It is gravely, quietly, perseveringly _at work_. And earnest, hearty, steady work at that which God has given us to do--work hearty, if a little dull and monotonous--this is the lesson taught by Summer days.
Work, steady work, dry, monotonous work, aye, this is the lesson of Life’s Summer; this succeeds its dream-time, this precedes its rest. Yes, in truth, the Spring anticipation and eager energy have gone. The Autumn repose has not yet come. The year is gravely, and steadily, and prosaically at work now; its ardour and ecstasies calmed, its wild impossible hopes toned down, its grace of blossom vanished. All vegetation is busy, maturing seed and fruit, sober grain and useful hay. The earth, like her child, the ant,
“Provideth her meat in the summer, And gathereth her food in the harvest.”
Toiling in the dust and heat; toiling without rest, wearily often, uncheered by songs. For the little choristers of the trees are themselves grave and sedate now, and busied with their nests, and with the care of rearing their family. There is little change, save a deepening of colour; the morning finds the earth still ceaselessly at work, and in the tender evenings and grey nights, the glimpsing lightnings and the intent stars disclose or behold the same scene:
“Rapid, rosy-tinted lightnings, where the rocky clouds are riven, Like the lifting of a veil before the inner courts of heaven: Silver stars in azure evenings, slowly climbing up the steep”:
“Corn-fields ripening to the harvest, and the wide seas smooth with sleep.”
Let Summer days then teach us, as, one after one, they greet us and depart, their wise, but unobtruded lesson. The Summer time being the time of grave steady work, and there being also such a time in our lives, a time of dust, and heat, and toil, when our spirits sometimes seem to flag, and the very sameness of labour brings over us a depression, and a lingering longing after the time of blossom, and of clear new verdure; there being this resemblance between us, let us examine the year’s work, if perhaps we may gather some hints for ours. _How_ does the year work? and how should _we_ work, when that first zest that made work easy has gone, and the time of rest is on the other side of our labour.