Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 3.djvu/307

294 creation, as I told Dr Banbaby; but lie could not understand it, for 'it was not in the Bible/ no part of revelation; ' continued creation is a contradiction in the adjective;'—well, well, it is an agreement in the substantive, a fact of nature if not a word of theology. What 'a useful world! But what a power of beauty there is too I How handsome the clover is!—Miss Moolly Cow, you don't care anything about that ; it is grass to you, to the bee it is honey ; it is loveliness also to my eyes. The Indian corn—a Mississippi of use is it? Why, it is the loveliest Amazon that ever ran in all this green world of grains I That millpond grinds use for brother 'Zekiel all day long, makes him a rich man. But what beauty runs over the dam, year out, year in, and comes dripping down from those mosses, on the stones : how much more of it lies there in the pond to feed the lilies, handsome babies on that handsome breast,—and serve as looking-glasses for the clouds all day, the stars all night! This makes all the neighbours rich, if they will only hold up their dish when it rains wealth of handsomeness. Beauty is all grist,— no toll taken out for grinding that. Mill-pond is useful and beautiful' at the same time, a servant and a sister. How that little cat's paw of wind rumples its dress, and those just as Matilda Jane read it to me in Tennyson last Sunday afternoon, when her mother was hearing Banbaby preach on the 'Fall of man.’ What an eye that Tennyson has!—he sees the fact; daguerreotypes it into words. If I were a poet, I would sit right down before nature and paint her just as she is; that is the way Tennyson does. So did Shakespeare—did not put nature's hair into I papers; liked the original curl; so do I; so does God. There, it is all gone now, just as still as before ! I used to fish here,—but I only caught the outline of the hills, and the shadows of the trees. How those great round clouds come and look down there, and see their own face! What 1 don't you like it, that you must change it so fast? Well, you keep your beauty, if you do change your shape. What sunny colours! It is Sunday all the time to the Clouds and the pond. How all the hills are reflected in