arth in each pointed petal. A distant
avalanche, as though the hills were settling, the bustle of the
torrent, the wind in the pines and larches, only marked by contrast
the incredible stillness of the heights--then, suddenly, this star of
blue blazing among the desolation. I recall your cry and my
own--wonder, joy, as of something unearthly--that took us by
surprise.

In these three, certainly, lay the authentic thrill I speak of; while
it lasts, the actual moment seems but a pedestal from which the eyes
of the heart look into Heaven, a pedestal from which the soul leaps
out into the surrounding garden of limitless possibilities which are
its birthright, and immediately accessible. And that, indeed, is the
essential meaning of the thrill--that Heaven is here and now. The
gates of ivory are very tiny; Beauty sounds the elfin horns that
opens them; smaller than the eye of a needle is that opening--upon
the diamond point of the thrill you flash within, and the Garden of
Eternity is yours for ever--now.

I am writing this to you, because I know you listen with your heart,
not with your nerves; and the garden that I write about you know now
better than I do myself. I have but tasted it, you dwell therein,
unaged, unageing. And so we share the flowers; we know the light, the
fragrance and the birds we know together.... They tell me--even our
mother says it sometimes with a sigh--that you are far away, not
understanding that we have but recovered the garden of our early
childhood, you permanently, I whenever the thrill opens the happy
gates. You are as near to me as that. Our love was forged inside
those ivory gates that guard that childhood state, facing four ways,
and if I wandered outside a-while, puzzled and lonely, the thrill of
beauty has led me back again, and I, have found your love unchanged,
unaged, still growing in the garden of our earliest memories. I did
but lose my way for a time....

That childhood state must be amazingly close to God, I suppose, for
though no child is consciously aware of beauty, its whole being cries
Yes to the universe and life as naturally and instinctively as a
flower turns to the sun. The universe lies in its overall pocket of
alpaca, and beauty only becomes a thing apart when the growing
consciousness, hearing the world cry No, steps through the gates to
enquire and cannot find the entrance any more. Beauty then becomes a
signpost showing the way home again. Baudelaire, of course, m