Sweet are the uses of Life.

* * * * *

The house is wreathed with holly boughs at Christmas; the shining holly—the smooth-leaved—out of the woods nods to the sparkling eyes of the children as they dance;

The candles are darkened, and they stand round the dragon-fire in the bowl, hushed, large-eyed, in the livid and flickering light.

The sun rises magnificent in winter upon the vast concave of air—level bars of mist lie in the hollows; firs and evergreens adorn the bare and silent woodlands.

The horse in the stable purrs at the sound of the tread of his master, and turns his beautiful head, as much as to say, Why are you so late with my breakfast? He paws impatiently while his feed is being prepared.

Towards the city along all the roads in the early light the workers converge. They take wafts of the fresh morning with them to their work. Sorrow and joy accompany them and share their meals in the everyday old haunts.

* * * * *

In the house a Stranger waits for the children; he stands by in the dark and leans over them and watches their faces, as they watch the dancing blue flame;

He moves along the roads unseen, and waits in the great city, and in the woods at early dawn he waits. None but the woodman and He see the thin waned moon arising with stars in pale and silent beauty before the sun.

* * * * *

Sweet are the uses of Life.

The Stranger glides to and fro; hours and centuries and thousand-year stretches he waits.

Among the children of mankind he waits. He too takes his place with the rest; he is a king, a poet, a soldier, a priest, a herdsman, a fig-pricker, a pariah.

It is indifferent: he sees all and passes with all—joy surrounds him wherever he is.

He sees the down-trodden and outcast; he sees the selfish and tyrannical—he looks them right in the face but they do not see him;

He sees the patient and heroic; but he utters no word either of praise or blame.

* * * * *

The tall ash-shoots aspire in the hedge-rows; the trees lift innumerable fingers towards the sky, the brooks run downward unceasingly, atoms that have remained for thousands of years sealed in the rocks arise and pass beyond the boundaries of the earth and go voyaging through space;

All else hastens onward towards some unknown accomplishment—unerring;

He waits secure, and sings the songs of praise.

The morning and the evening are his song, and the land and the sea are the words of it, and the voices of all creation heard in silence are the perpetual offering of it.

He needs not to arise, nor to go hither and thither—all is finished and perfect.

What he desires, what he alone dreams of, that all mortal things through all time and space never-ceasingly occupy themselves to perform.

His fingers, as he sits at ease among the other children, are the myriad sunbeams and the thick-sown stars and the innumerable blades of grass;

The winds are his messengers over all the world, and flames of fire his servants; the icebergs break from their northern shores, the southern lands clothe themselves with green and yellowing crops, and the clouds float over the half-concealed dappled and shaded Earth—to fulfil his will, to fulfil his eternal joy.