14 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



But ah, through thine eyes unnumbered dead ones are peering 



And by ghosts is the blowing meadow-land unforgotten ; 

 Memories deepen the blue. 



The sunset is pathetic through tears not our own. From far-oflf hills 

 we feel a divine beckoning. We tremble at the lightning from 

 unknown eyes in a throng. 



And a cliild will sorrow at evening bells over meadows, 



And grieve by the breaking sea. 



O never alone can we gaze on the blue and the greeimess; 



Others are gazing and sigh; 



And never alone can we listen to twilight music; 



Others listen and weep. 



And the woman that sings in the dimness to millions is singing; 



Not to thee, O my soul, alone. 



But if we are the products of all that has gone before, so in equal 

 truth is the ''flower in the crannied wall." It is obviously true of 

 the flower as seen by us; for we see it with the eyes of the world's 

 history. We are the primal slime; we are the arboreal creatures 

 with dimly glowing eyes; we are the club-wielding dwellers in the 

 cave. But we are also the mind that told the stars in their arising; 

 the mighty thinker who died of hemlock; yea, the Nazarene who 

 died on the cross. The next step is to realize that this is equally 

 true of the daisy or the columbine. The Temple of the Smallest 

 Flower contains the secret of God just as truly as the Temple of 

 Reason, or the Church of Christ, or the whole course of man's develop- 

 ment. The most spiritualistic interpreter of the universe must accept 

 the facts of the world-process, even if he sublimate them into a tran- 

 scendental religion. 



This lesson we may read most agreeably in the second part of 

 "The Flower of Old Japan,'" a volume wherein Mr. Alfred Noyes 

 has tried to lead us to the Kingdom by piping us back to youth. The 

 God who guided mankind to his present heights is the God who made 

 the rose; and our guiding and the rose's making belong to the same 

 cosmic order. 



' The Flower of Old Japan and Other Poems, 1907. For the quotation see p. 165. 



