Out in wilderness

As I stand free and healthy

A war is raging.

For the world which seems
to lie before us like a land of dreams
So various, so beautiful, so new
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain.
And we are here as on a darkling plain.
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight
Where ignorant armies clash by night. – Mathew Arnold from “Dover Beach”

How can a man like myself, soaked with news, his senses muffled, shielded by the mechanics of his civilization and worn into despair by its brutalities, how can he know the real earth when he meets it? How can he be company for it? – John Hay In Defense of Nature