floral oil painting

But next day, Want came to me pale and bare. Long after the
little birds had left their nests; long after bees had come in the
sweet prime of day to gather the heath honey before the dew was dried-
when the long morning shadows were curtailed, and the sun filled earth
and sky- I got up, and I looked round me.
What a still, hot, perfect day! What a golden desert this spreading
moor! Everywhere sunshine. I wished I could live in it and on it. I
saw a lizard run over the crag; I saw a bee busy among the sweet
bilberries. I would fain at the moment have become bee or lizard, that
I might have found fitting nutriment, permanent shelter here. But I
was a human being, and had a human being's wants: I must not linger
where there was nothing to supply them. I rose; I looked back at the
bed I had left. Hopeless of the future, I wished but this- that my
Maker had that night thought good to require my soul of me while I
slept; and that this weary frame, absolved by death from further
conflict with fate, had now but to decay quietly, and mingle in
peace with the soil of this wilderness. Life, however, was yet in my
possession, with all its requirements, and pains, and