You, who keep account of crises and transition in this life, sit down the first time nature says plain “No” to some “Yes” in you, and walks over you, in gorgeous sweeps of scorn. We all begin by singing with the birds and running fast with June days, hand in hand; but once, for all, the birds must sing against us, and the sun strike down upon us like a friend’s sword caught by an enemy to slay us, while we read the dear name on the blade which bites at us! That’s bitter and convincing: after that we seldom doubt that something in the large smooth order of creation…has gone wrong.

Most of us don’t live very long before nature says “No” to some “Yes” in us, and “walks over you in gorgeous sweeps of scorn.” That’s a big part of what it means to be human.

It comes to us as young people, when…