Adirondack Wilderness

This letter perfectly works as poetry, and perhaps a lyric, perhaps perfectly for Father's Day.

6/16/1895, Springfield Centre, N.Y. (Letters of William James)

To Mrs. Henry Whitman: "Just reviving from the addled and corrupted condition in which the Cambridge year has left me; just at the portals of that Adirondack wilderness for the breath of which I have sighed for years, unable to escape the cares of domesticity and get there; just about to get a little health into me, a little simplification and solidification and purification and sanification—things which will never come again if this one chance be lost; just filled to satiety with all the simpering conventions and vacuous excitements of so-called civilization; hungering for their opposite, the smell of the spruce, the feel of the moss, the sound of the cataract, the bath in its waters, the divine outlook from the cliff or hill-top over the unbroken forest..."

Adirondack wilderness
The breath of which I have sighed for years
Unable to escape the cares
Just about to get a little health into me
Things which will never come again if this one chance be lost
Filled to satiety with all the simpering conventions of so-called civilization
Hungering for their opposite
The smell of the spruce,
The feel of the moss,
The sound of the cataract,
The bath in its waters,
The divine outlook from the cliff,
The hill-top over the unbroken forest

Adirondack Wilderness (6-16-1895) by meta4s