as no longer to spend his days apart from the jostling
and the shouldering and the breath of troops; he was to bear his part in
the mechanism that serves the terrible ends of war. And the close of a
life which he would have pronounced, from his former point of view, to
be slavery--the close might be speedy death. He had to bring himself to
look upon his old life--the life that was lighted by his visions and
his hopes, the life that fulfilled his sense of universal existence--as
a mere dream, perhaps never to be dreamed again.

That is what he calls 'adapting himself.' And how the word recurs in his
letters! It is a word that teaches him where duty lies, a duty of which
the difficulty is to be gauged by the difference of the present from the
past, of the bygone hope from the present effort. 'In the fulness of
productiveness,' he confesses, 'at the hour when life is flowering, a
young creature is snatched away, and cast upon a barren soil where all
he has cherished fails him. Well, after the first wrench he finds that
life has not forsaken him, and sets to work upon the new ungrateful
ground. The effort calls for such a concentration of energy as leaves no
time for either hopes or fears. And I manage it, except only in moments
of rebellion (quickly suppressed) of the thoughts and wishes of the
past. But I need my whole strength at times for keeping down the pangs
of memory and accepting what is.'

Indeed, strength was called for day by day. This 'adaptation' was no
transformation. But by a continuous act of vital energy he assimilated
all that he drew from his surroundings. Thus he fed his heart, and kept
his own ideals. This was a way to renounce all things, and by
renunciation to keep the one thing needful, to remain himself, to live,
and not only to live but to flourish; to have a part in that universal
life which produces flowers in nature, art and poetry in man. To gain so
much, all that was needed was to treasure, unaltered by the terrors of
war, a heart eager for all shapes of beauty. For this most religious
poet, beauty was that divine spirit which shines more or less clearly in
all things, and which raises him who perceives it higher than the
accidents of individual existence. And he receives its full influence,
and is rid of all anxiety, who is able to bid adieu to the present and
the past, to regret nothing, to desire nothing, to receive from the
passing moment that influence in its plenitude. 'I accept all fro