The temperature in the wild west Highlands of Scotland was evidently determined to remain below freezing for the time being. The morning frost sparkled in the chilly sunlight, and when Algy tried striding across the ground, the grasses crackled crisply beneath his feet.
Although the shadows remained exceedingly long and cold, the low winter sun was bright and inviting, so Algy decided to indulge in a wee bit of reading out of doors, with his new Christmas scarf wrapped snugly around his neck to avoid the worst effects of the chilled air.
Leaning back on the tree seat, he opened his copy of The Oxford Book of English Verse at a random page, and found a poem concerning the human race with which – as a daft fluffy bird revelling in the glories of Nature despite the biting frost – he heartily agreed:
The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;— Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
[Algy is reading the poem The world is too much with us by the 19th century English poet William Wordsworth.]
