yesterday, and their purple delicacy assured
me that all the filth, all the falsehood and tragedy of the
world, should pass and be blown away; that the garden was full
of dancing fairies, joy moving them to their dancing; that it
was my own fault if I could not see Apollo leaning down out of
the Sun; and my own fatuity, and that alone, if I could not hear
the Stars of Morning singing together, and all the sons of God
shouting for you. And it was the truth they were telling; the
plain, bald, naked truth;--they have never learned to lie, and do
not know what it means. There is no sentimentalism in this;
only science. We live in a Universe absolutely soaked through
with God,--or with Poetry, which is perhaps a better name for It;
a Universe peopled thick with Gods. But it is all very far from
our common thoughts and conceptions; that is why it sounds to
most people like sentimental nonsense and 'poetry.' No wonder
Plato hated that word;--since it is made a hand-grenade, in the
popular mind, to fling at every truth. And yet Poetry 'gets in
on us,' too, occasionally, and accomplishes for

"the woods and waters wild"

the work they cannot do for themselves;--the work they cannot do,
cause we will not look at them, cannot see them, and have
forgotten their ancient language, being too much immersed in a
rubbishing gabble of our own.

What Toism, and especially Chwangtse as I think, did for the
Chinese was to publish the syntax and vocabulary of that ancient
language; to make people understand how to take these grand
protagonists of Tao; how to communicate familiarly with these
selfless avatars of the Most High. Listen to this: the thought
is close-packed, but I think you will follow it:--

"The true Sage rejects all distinction of this and that," that is
to say, of subjective, or that which one perceives within one's
own mind and consciousness, and objective, or that which is
perceived as existing outside of them;--he does not look upon the
mountain or the daffodil as things different or apart from his
own conscious being. "He takes his refuge in Tao, and places
himself in subjective relations with all things"; he keeps the
mountain within him; the scent of the daffodil, and her yellow
candle-flame of beauty, are within the sphere and circle of
himself;

"...the little wave of Breffny goes stumbling through his
soul."

"Hence it is said"--this is Chwangtse again--"that there is
nothing like the lig