There will always be something worth living for while there are shimmery
afternoons. Waldo chuckled with intense inward satisfaction as the old hen
had done--she, over the insects and the warmth; he, over the old brick
walls, and the haze, and the little bushes. Beauty is God's wine, with
which He recompenses the souls that love Him; He makes them drunk.
The fellow looked, and at last stretched out one hand to a little ice-plant
that grew on the sod wall of the sty; not as though he would have picked
it, but as it were in a friendly greeting. He loved it. One little leaf
of the ice-plant stood upright, and the sun shone through it. He could see
every little crystal cell like a drop of ice in the transparent green, and
it thrilled him.
There are only rare times when a man's soul can see Nature.
So long as any passion holds its revel there, the eyes are holden that they
should not see her.
Go out if you will and walk alone on the hillside in the evening, but if
your favourite child lies ill at home, or your lover comes tomorrow, or at
your heart there lies a scheme for the holding of wealth, then you will
return as you went out; you will have seen nothing. For Nature, ever, like
the Old Hebrew God, cries out, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me."
Only then, when there comes a pause, a blank in your life, when the old
idol is broken, when the old hope is dead, when the old desire is crushed,
then the Divine compensation of Nature is made manifest.
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