Page:The Yellow Book - 03.djvu/170

 an ancient city, a lonely chamber, perfect poets. Those should make up a passing life well: for death! I can watch tobacco clouds, exploring the secret of their beautiful conclusion. And, indeed, I think that already this life has something of their manner, those wheeling clouds! It has their light touch upon the world, and certainly their harmlessness. Early morning, when the dew sparkles red; honey, and coffee, and eggs for a breakfast; the quick, eager walk between the limes, through the Close of fine grass, to the river fields; then the blithe return to my poets; all that, together, comes to resemble the pleasant spheres of tobacco cloud; I mean, the circling hours, in their passage, and in their change, have something of a dreamy order and progression. Such little incidents! Now, grey air and whistling leaves: now, a marketing crowd of country folk round the Cross: and presently, clear candles; with Milton, in rich Baskervile type, or Lucretius, in the exquisite print of early Italy.

Such little incidents, in a world of battles and of plagues: of violent death by sea and land! Yet this quiet life, too, has difficulties and needs: its changes must be gone through with a ready pleasure and a mind unhesitating. For, trivial though they be in aspect and amount, yet the consecration of them, to be an holy discipline of experience, is so much the greater an attempt: it is an art. Each thing, be it man, or book, or place, should have its rights, when it encounters me: each has its proper quality, its peculiar spirit, not to be misinterpreted by me in carelessness, nor overlooked with impatience. That is clear: but neither must I vaunt my just view of common life. Meditation, at twilight, by the window looking toward the bare downs, is very different from that anxious examination of motives, dear to sedulous souls. My meditation is only still life: the clouds of