But there is no escaping the
mill that grinds slowly and grinds small; and those who refuse to
be living stones in the living temple, must be ground into mortar
for it.
The next day, of his own choice, Cosmo went to Mr. Simon. He also
knew how to treat the growing plant. He set him such work as should
in a measure harmonize with his late experience, and so drew him
gently from his past: mere labour would have but driven him deeper
into it. Yesterday is as much our past as the bygone century, and
sheltering in it from an uncongenial present, we are lost to our
morrow. Thus things slid gently back with him into their old
grooves. An era of blessedness had vanished, but was not lost; it
was added to his life, gathered up into his being; it was dissolved
into his consciousness, and interpenetrated his activity. Where
there is no ground of regret, or shame, or self-reproach, new joy
casts not out the old; and now that the new joy was old, the older
joys came softly trooping back to their attendance. Nor was this
all. The departing woman left behind her a gift that had never been
hers--the power of verse: he began to be a poet. The older I grow
the more am I filled with marvel at the divine idea of the mutual
development of the man and the woman. Many a woman has made of a
man, for the time at least, and sometimes for ever, a poet, caring
for his verses never a cambric handkerchief or pair of gloves! A
wretched man to whom a poem is not worth a sneer, may set a woman
singing to the centuries!
Any gift of the nature of poetry, however poor or small, is of
value inestimable to the development of the individual, ludicrous
even though it may show itself, should conceit clothe it in print.
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