search for
truth was one chief end of our being.

It was a pity that we were expected to begin thinking upon hard
subjects so soon, and it was also a pity that we were set to hard work
while so young. Yet these were both inevitable results of circumstances
then existing; and perhaps the two belong together. Perhaps habits of
conscientious work induce thought. Certainly, right thinking naturally
impels people to work.

We learned no theories about "the dignity of labor," but we were taught
to work almost as if it were a religion; to keep at work, expecting
nothing else. It was our inheritance, banded down from the outcasts of
Eden. And for us, as for them, there was a blessing hidden in the
curse. I am glad that I grew up under these wholesome Puritanic
influences, as glad as I am that I was born a New Englander; and I
surely should have chosen New England for my birthplace before any
region under the sun.

Rich or poor, every child comes into the world with some imperative
need of its own, which shapes its individuality. I believe it was
Grotius who said, "Books are necessities of my life. Food and clothing
I can do without, if I must."

My "must-have" was poetry. From the first, life meant that to me. And,
fortunately, poetry is not purchasable material, but an atmosphere in
which every life may expand. I found it everywhere about me. The
children of old New England were always surrounded, it is true, with
stubborn matter of fact,--the hand to hand struggle for existence. But
that was no hindrance. Poetry must have prose to root itself in; the
homelier its earth-spot, the lovelier, by contrast, its
heaven-breathing flowers.

To different minds, poetry may present different phases. To me, the
reverent faith of the people I lived among, and their faithful everyday
living, was poetry; blossoms and trees and blue skies were poetry. God
himself was poetry. As I grew up and lived on, friendship became to me
the deepest and sweetest ideal of poetry. To live in other lives, to
take their power and beauty into our own, that is poetry experienced,
the most inspiring of all. Poetry embodied in persons, in lovely and
lofty characters, more sacredly than all in the One Divine Person who
has transfigured our human life with the glory of His sacrifice,--all
the great lyrics and epics pale before that, and it is within the reach
and comprehension of every human soul.

To care for poetry in this way does not make one a poet,