remedy
in time of grief, to talk with mine own heart in silence. And the
breezes whispered to the note of the songster birds, and from the
branches brought to me sweet slumber, though my heart was
well-nigh broken. And the cicadas, friends of the sun, chirped
with the shrill note that issues from their breasts, and filled
the whole grove with sound. A cold spring hard by bedewed my feet
as it flowed gently through the glen; but I was held in the
strong grip of grief, nor did I seek aught of these things, for
the mind, when it is burdened with sorrow, is not fain to take
part in pleasure.

The classic writers had also contrasted Nature with mind, as, for
example, Ibykos in his famous _Spring Song_[9]; but not with
Gregory's brooding melancholy and self-tormenting introspection. The
poem goes on to compare him to a cloud that wanders hither and
thither in darkness, without even a visible outline of that for which
he longed; without peace:

I am a stream of troubled water: ever onward I move, nor hath any
part of me rest; thou wilt not a second time pass over that
stream thou didst before pass over, nor wilt thou see a second
time the man thou sawest before.

In his dreamy enthusiasm he likes nothing better than solitude:
'Happy he who leads a lonely life, happy he who with the mighty force
of a pure mind seeth the glory of the lights of heaven.'

The same tone constantly recurs in his writings. Human life is but
dust, blown by the wind; a stormy voyage, faded grass; kingdoms and
powers are waves of the sea, which suck under and drown; a charming
girl is a rose with thorns, etc.

Gregory of Nyssa again praises the order and splendour of Nature and
her Creator in Old Testament style: 'Seeing the harmony of the whole,
of wonders in heaven and in earth, and how the elements of things,
though mutually opposed, are all by Nature welded together, and make
for one aim through a certain indefinable intercommunion.'

With the pathos of Job he cries:

Who has spread out the ground at my feet?
Who has made the sky firm over me as a dome?
Who carries the sun as a torch before me?
Who sends springs into the ravines?
Who prepares the path of the waters?

And who gives my spirit the wing for that high flight in which I
leave earth behind and hasten through the wide ocean of air, know
the beauty of the ether, and lift myself to th