Richard Jefferies is renowned for his observations and writings on nature. Below is an extract in which he describes the abundance so characteristic of the natural world; thousands of variations and myriads of colours, copious quantities to the point of excess - nature flings life in all directions, showering the world with profusion, giving with generosity and extravagance. Yet we live in a world of scarcity. How can this be? Jefferies observes and ponders.
"The
little lawn beside the strawberry bed, burned brown there, and green towards
the house shadow, holds how many myriad grass blades? Here they are all matted together, long, and
dragging each other down. Part them, and beneath them are still more, overhung
and hidden. The fibres are inter-tangled, woven in an endless basket work and
chaos of green and dried threads. A blameable profusion this; a fifth as many would be
enough; altogether a wilful waste here. As for these insects that spring out of
it as I press the grass, a hundredth part of them would suffice. The American
crab tree is a snowy mount in spring; the flakes of bloom, when they fall,
cover the grass with a film - a bushel of bloom, which the wind takes and
scatters afar. The extravagance is sublime. The two little cherry trees are as
wasteful; they throw away handfuls of flower; but in the meadows the careless,
spendthrift ways of grass and flower and all things are not to be expressed.
Seeds by the hundred million float with absolute indifference on the air. The
oak has a hundred thousand more leaves than necessary, and never hides a single
acorn. Nothing utilitarian - everything on a scale of splendid waste. Such
noble, broadcast, open-armed waste is delicious to behold.
Never was there such a lying proverb as "Enough is as good as a
feast." Give me the feast; give me squandered millions of seeds, luxurious
carpets of petals, green mountains of oak leaves. The greater the waste, the
greater the enjoyment - the nearer the approach to real life. Casuistry is of
no avail; the fact is obvious; Nature flings treasures abroad, puffs them with
open ups along on every breeze, piles up lavish layers of them in the free open
air, packs countless numbers together in the needles of a fir tree. Prodigality
and superfluity are stamped on everything she does. The ear
of wheat returns a hundredfold the grain from which it grew. The surface of the
earth offers to us far more than we can consume - the grains, the seeds, the
fruits, the animals, the abounding products are beyond the power of all the
human race to devour. They can, too, be multiplied a thousandfold. There is no
natural lack. Whenever there is lack among us it is from artificial causes,
which intelligence should remove.
From the
littleness, and meanness, and niggardliness forced upon us by circumstances,
what a relief to turn aside to the exceeding plenty of Nature! There are no
bounds to it, there is no comparison to parallel it, so great is this
generosity. No physical reason exists why every human being should not have
sufficient, at least, of
necessities. For any human being to starve, or even to be in trouble about the
procuring of simple food, appears, indeed, a strange and unaccountable thing,
quite upside down, and contrary to sense, if you do but consider a moment the
enormous profusion
the earth throws at our feet. In the slow process of time, as the human heart grows
larger, such provision, I sincerely trust, will be made that no one need ever
feel anxiety about mere subsistence. Then, too, let there be some imitation of
this open-handed
generosity and divine waste. Let the generations to come feast free of care,
like my finches on the seeds of the mowing-grass,
from which no voice drives them. If I could but give away as freely as the
earth does!
Richard Jefferies (1848-1887)
