Daily Dose

From The Companions of Jehu, Volume Two, by Alexandre Dumas

IT WAS

"It was one of those beautiful winter days which show men who believe Nature to be dead that nature does not die; she only sleeps.  The man who lives seventy or eighty years has nights of ten or twelve hours, and complains that their length shortens the brevity of his days.  Nature, which has an infinite existence, and trees which live one thousand years, sleeps for five months, which are our winters, but which are their nights.  Poets sing the immortality of Nature, saying that she dies each autumn and comes to life again each spring.  Poets are mistaken; Nature does not die each autumn, -- she falls asleep; Nature does not come to life again each spring; -- she awakes.  When our earth really dies, it will be dead indeed; and then it will roll into space or fall into chaos, motionless, mute, silent, without trees, without flowers, without verdure, and without poets."

From Chapter Two