el
when the charm of some old master, hitherto unsympathetic, is suddenly
revealed to us. Ah! it was this they saw. How blind they must have
thought us!

Brown eyes that I love, will you forgive me that I once looked into blue
eyes as I am looking now into yours? Hair black as Erebus, will you
forgive these hands that once loved to bathe in a brook of rippled gold?
Ah! they did not know. It was in ignorance they sinned. They did not
know.

O my beautiful cypress, stately queen of the garden of the world,
forgive me that once I gave to the little shrub-like women the worship
that is rightly yours!

Lady, whose loveliness is like white velvet, a vineyard heavy with
golden grapes, abundant as an orchard of apple blossoms, forgive that
once I loved the shadow women, the sad wreathing mists of beauty, the
silvery uncorseted phantoms of womanhood. It was in ignorance I sinned.
I did not know.

Ah! That Mephistopheles of experience! How he has led us from one fair
face to another, teaching us, one by one, the beauty of all. No longer
lonely sectarians of beauty, pale prophets of one lovely face, there is
now no type whose secret is hidden from us. The world has become a
garden of beautiful faces. The flowers are different, but they are all
beautiful. How is it possible for us, now that we know the charm of each
one, to be indifferent to any, or to set the beauty of one above the
other? We have learned the beauty of the orchid, but surely we have not
unlearned the rose; and would you say that orchid or rose is more
beautiful than the lily? Surely not. They are differently beautiful,
that is all.

Are blue eyes more beautiful than brown? I thought so once, but now I
see that they are differently beautiful, that is all. Nor is gold hair
more beautiful than black any more, or black than gold. They are
differently beautiful, that is all. Nor is thy white skin, O Saxon lady,
more beautiful than hers of tropic bronze.

Come sad, or come with laughter, beautiful faces; come like stars in
dreams, or come vivid as fruit upon the bough; come softly like a timid
fawn, or terrible as an army with banners; come silent, come singing ...
you are all beautiful, and none is fairer than another--only differently
fair.

And yet ... and yet ... Experience is indeed Mephistopheles in this: We
must pay him for all this wisdom. Is it the old price? Is it our souls?
I wonder.

This at least is true: that, while indeed he has opened our eye