Without colour, or leaf,
or sunshine, or song of bird and flutter of butterfly's wing; without
anything sensuous, without advantage or gilding of summer - the power is
ever there.
Or shall we not say that the desire of the mind is ever
there, and - will - satisfy itself, in a measure at least, even with the
barren wild? The heart from the moment of its first beat instinctively
longs for the beautiful; the means we possess to gratify it are
limited - we are always trying to find the statue in the rude block. Out
of the vast block of the earth the mind endeavours to carve itself
loveliness, nobility, and grandeur. We strive for the right and the true:
it is circumstance that thrusts wrong upon us.
One morning a labouring man came to the door with a spade, and asked if
he could dig the garden, or try to, at the risk of breaking the tool in
the ground. He was starving; he had had no work for two months; it was
just six months, he said, since the first frost started the winter.
Nature and the earth and the gods did not trouble about - him - , you see;
he might grub the rock-frost ground with his hands if he chose - the
yellowish black sky did not care. Nothing for man! The only good he found
was in his fellow-men; they fed him after a fashion - still they fed him.
There was no good in anything else.
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