Part 4 (1/2)

There is a consonance of all things, a blending of all that we know about the material world and the spiritual It consists for me of all the impressions, vibrations, heat, cold, taste, smell, and the sensations which these convey to the mind, infinitely combined, interwoven with associated ideas and acquired knowledge No thoughtful person will believe that what I said about theof footsteps is strictly true of mere jolts and jars It is an array of the spiritual in certain natural elee of physical habits and s What would odours signify if they were not associated with the time of the year, the place I live in, and the people I know?

The result of such a blending is sos far removed from a melody, very far from a symphony (For the benefit of those who must be reassured, I will say that I have felt ahis violin, that I have read about a symphony, and so have a fair intellectual perception of ather up the stray notes and combine them into a full, harmonious whole If the person who accoifted, we call hireat poets, it is true Yet now and again you find one deaf and blind who has attained to his royal kingdom of beauty

I have a little volume of poems by a deaf-blind lady, Madaht Now it is tender and sweet, now full of tragic passion and the sternness of destiny Victor Hugo called her ”La Grande Voyante” She has written several plays, two of which have been acted in Paris The French Academy has crowned her work

The infinite wonders of the universe are revealed to us in exactthem The keenness of our vision depends not on how much we can see, but on how e create beauty Nature sings her s to those who love her She does not unfold her secrets to those who coather facts, but to those who see in her estions of lofty, delicate sentiht, 1907, by The Whitman Studio

The Little Boy Next Door

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Am I to be denied the use of such adjectives as ”freshness” and ”sparkle,” ”dark” and ”gloo I have felt a rose-bush laden with dew and fragrance I have felt the curves and graces of my kitten at play I have known the sweet, shy ways of little children I have known the sad opposites of all these, a ghastly touch picture Remember, I have soo At a sudden turn I have stepped upon starved, ignoble weeds, and reaching out my hands, I have touched a fair tree out of which a parasite had taken the life like a va limp, whose little heart beat no more I have wept over the feebleness and deformity of a child, laenius of Thoht” from mere touch sensations From contrasts so irreconcilable can we fail to form an idea of beauty and know surely e meet with loveliness?

Here is a sonnet eloquent of a blind man's power of vision:

THE MOUNTAIN TO THE PINE

Thou tall, majestic monarch of the wood, That standest where no wild vines dare to creep, Men call thee old, and say that thou hast stood A century upon ed steep; Yet unto s that I have seen,-- The forest monarchs that have passed away Upon the spot where first I saw thy green; For I as that crawl or creep, Or birds of air, or creatures of the deep; I was the first dim outline of God's plan: Only the waters of the restless sea And the infinite stars in heaven are old to ladhis Anthology, for knowing it, so fine a poet and critic could not fail to give it a place in his treasure-house of American poetry The poet, Mr

Clarence Hawkes, has been blind since childhood; yet he finds in nature hints of coe and impressions that cos upon the walls of his thought And into the poet's house come all the true spirits of the world

It was a rare poet who thought of the mountain as ”the first dim outline of God's plan” That is the real wonder of the poem, and not that a blind man should speak so confidently of sky and sea Our ideas of the sky are an acculimpses, literary allusions, and the observations of others, with an e of all My face feels only a tiny portion of the ath continuous space and feel the air at every point, every instant I have been told about the distances from our earth to the sun, to the other planets, and to the fixed stars I ht and width that ain a deep sense of the sky's i constantly over water, water, nothing but water, and you give me the solitude, the vastness of ocean which fills the eye I have been in a little sail-boat on the sea, when the rising tide swept it toward the shore May I not understand the poet's figure: ”The green of spring overflows the earth like a tide”? I have felt the flame of a candle blow and flutter in the breeze May I not, then, say: ”Myriads of fireflies flit hither and thither in the deet grass like little fluttering tapers”?

Combine the endless space of air, the sun's war spirit, the frequent breaking through the soil of a brook or the expanse of the wind-ruffled lake, the tactual undulation of the hills, which I recall when I a trees upon trees as I walk by thes that I try to keep while others tell me the directions of the various points of the scenery, and you will begin to feel surer of ht will go with clearness is the horizon of ine the one which the eye e distance,--it is fit only for the contact of surfaces,--but thought leaps the chasm For this reason I am able to use words descriptive of objects distant from my senses I have felt the rondure of the infant's tender form I can apply this perception to the landscape and to the far-off hills

analOGIES IN SENSE PERCEPTION

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analOGIES IN SENSE PERCEPTION

I HAVE not touched the outline of a star nor the glory of the hts in ht, and by theatethe haven as he who steers by the North Star Perhaps lorify reen of the fields, ht in; but they are none the less colour to me The sun does not shi+ne forflash, nor do the trees turn green in the spring; but they have not therefore ceased to exist, any more than the landscape is annihilated when you turn your back on it