Where the
mind, heart, and arms work in concert under the eye of Providence, true
happiness would be found, and a holy harmony would exist between the
munificence of God and the delights of the human soul. Then, instead of
piteous, ghastly Death walking in his furrow, whip in hand, the painter
of allegories could place beside the ploughman a radiant angel, sowing
the blessed grain in the smoking furrows with generous hand.
And the dream of a peaceful, free, poetical, laborious, simple existence
for the husbandman is not so difficult of conception that it need be
relegated to a place among chimeras. The gentle, melancholy words of
Virgil: "O how happy the life of the husbandman, if he but knew his
happiness!" is an expression of regret; but, like all regrets, it is
also a prediction. A day will come when the ploughman may be an artist,
if not to express,--which will then matter but little, perhaps,--at all
events, to feel, the beautiful. Do you believe that this mysterious
intuition of poesy does not already exist within him in the state of
instinct and vague revery? In those who have a little hoard for their
protection to-day, and in whom excess of misery does not stifle all
moral and intellectual development, pure happiness, felt and
appreciated, is at the elementary stage; and, furthermore, if poets'
voices have already arisen from the bosom of sorrow and fatigue, why
should it be said that the work of the hands excludes the exercise of
the functions of the mind? That exclusion is probably the general result
of excessive toil and profound misery; but let it not be said that when
man shall work only moderately and profitably, then there will be none
but bad workmen and bad poets.
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