twilight with the vespers of the whip-poor-will; the plover's cry; a 

 child's laughter and a child's face; a fair woman with her lovelit eyes; 

 a boy with dirty and gleeful face ; a leafless tree in a bare pasture ; the 

 distilled odors of night and dews, so beauty blooms and such things are 

 daily companionships; and we scarcely know that they are fair. What a 

 world Ruskin found in "The Stones of Venice!" and what rarer world 

 would God show every one of us if we would let him! Health to body 

 and soul is in this out-of-doors. A walk through dewy fields is to pass 

 into an enchanted land. Sometimes a friend says, "See, a falling star." 

 We look and see no passing light, and he replies, "It has fallen." No 

 brief flight of falling star is comparable for loveliness, though I love its 

 light, with what we wade knee-deep in as grasses growing in ravines, and 

 we have no thought for it. Nature as God left it is so much, has such a 

 pensive delight, and serves as evangel of a gospel of contentment and 

 peace. They are not poor who see. Riches unspeakable are theirs. I 

 would for myself and for others pray, "Teach me to see lest I be poor 

 beyond the depths of poverty." If I had might, as I would guide travelers 

 to a mountain which swept eyes over a visionary scene, so would I 

 guide to the vision of every day's delight. 



To go abroad is not our need. To stay at home and have a variant 

 world report to us as if we were emperors, that is traveledness. God will 

 leave nothing wholly commonplace. He is against common things in 

 that he exalts them into uncommon loveliness. A dead tree-trunk is 

 overgrown with moss and vines; and tawny deserts have haunting dis- 

 tances and solitudes enthralling to imagination; the homeliest face has 

 a radiant light upon it when love goes by its door with loitering steps; 

 winter has hospitalities genial as those of summer. All the year is 

 hospitable if we are neighborly. 



1 Flower in the crannied wall, 

 I pluck you out of the crannies, " 



and hold you with a sense of joy not to be lightly told. Writing poetry is 

 not our classic achievement after all. Seeing and feeling and being 

 poetry is life's best work. 

 Come, for 



"The swan on still St. Mary's lake 

 Floats double, swan and shadow.'" 



Lord, teach me to see! 



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