19 UNDER THE TREES. 



whence the commonest weed grows ; but the light 

 and life of the heavens are theirs also. In them 

 the visible and the invisible are harmonized ; in 

 them the real finds its completion in the ideal- 

 The common earth is common only to those who 

 are deaf to the voices and blind to the visions 

 which wait on it and make its flight a music and 

 its path a light. Out of these common things the 

 great artists build the homes of our souls. Rock- 

 founded are they, and broad-based on our mother 

 earth : but they have windows skyward, and there, 

 above the tumult of the little earth, the great worlds 

 sing. 



IV. 



You do yet taste 



Some stibtilities o the isle, that will not let you 

 Believe things certain. 



ONE brilliant morning, the sky cloudless and the 

 sea singing under a freshening wind, we sat under 

 a great tree, with a bit of soft sward before us, and 

 talked of Prospero. In that place the master pres 

 ence was always with us ; there was never an hour 

 in which we did not feel the spell of his creative 

 spirit. We were always secretly hoping that we 

 should come upon him in some secluded place, his 

 staff unbroken, and his book undrowned. But what 

 need had we of sight while the island encompassed 

 us and the multitudinous music filled the air ? 



