I have long been a fan of the writings of Leo Tolstoy.  But until recently I didn’t realize how deeply he loved nature.  The following short passage from his story “The Invaders” is poignant in his incredulity that humans who share the glory of this beautiful world can still hate and kill each other.–April Moore 

     “Such silence reigned in the whole detachment, that there could be plainly distinguished all the harmonious voices of the night, full of mysterious charm.  The distant melancholy howls of jackals, sometimes like the wails of despair, sometimes like laughter;  the monotonous ringing song of the cricket, the frog, the quail;  a gradually approaching murmur, the cause of which I could not make clear to my own mind;  and all those nocturnal, almost audible motions of Nature, which, it is so impossible either to comprehend or define, –united into one complete, beautiful harmony which we call “the silence of the night.”

     “This silence was broken, or rather was unified, by the dull thud of the hoofs, and the rustling of the tall grass through which the division ws slowly moving. 

     “Occasionally, however, was heard in the ranks the ring of a heavy cannon, the sound of clashing bayonets, stifled conversation, and the snorting of a horse.

     “Nature breathed peacefully in beauty and power.

     “Is it possible that people find no room to live together in this beautiful world, under this boundless starry heaven?  Is it possible that, amid this bewitching Nature, the soul of man can harbor the sentiments of hatred and revenge, or the passion for inflicting destruction on his own kind?  All ugly feelings in the heart of man ought, it would seem, to vanish away in this intercourse with Nature–with this immediate expression of beauty and goodness!”

This entry was posted on Friday, July 9th, 2010 at 8:49 am and is filed under Celebrating our beautiful Earth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.