twilight with the vespers of the whip-poor-will; the plover's cry; a 
child's laughter and a child's face; a tair 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. Whata 
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. | 
would for myself and for others pray, ‘‘Teach me to see lest | be poor 
beyond the depths of poverty.”’ If | had might, as I would guide travelers 
to a mountain which swept eyes over a visionary scene, so would | 
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. 
“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 sitll St. Mary's lake 
Floats double, swan and shadow."* 
Lord, teach me to see! 
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