God be thanked for
the thinkers of good and noble thoughts! It wakes up all the best in ourselves,
to come into close contact with others greater and better in every way than we
are. Having just made myself the possessor of "Guesses at Truth," I
feel as if I had struck a new mine, or were a privileged traveler into regions
hitherto unknown, where there is every variety of natural and cultivated
growth, where there are ever recurring contrasts of scenery, and where even the
rocks are not barren, but glittering with veins of precious ore. How much
better these "thinking books" are than any "sensation
books" of any kind, prose or poetry! They are the true intellectual
companions. One does not read them, and put them by on the shelf, to be read
again one of these days, perhaps, but they are wanted close at hand, and often.
“No spring nor summer beauty has such grace
As I have seen in an Autumnal face."
The poet Donne wrote
so of the mother of “holy George Herbert." It is so true! and I have seen
the same. It would be worth while to live long, to suffer much, to struggle and
to endure, if one might have such spiritual beauty blossom out of furrows and
wrinkles as has been made visible in aged human faces. Such countenances do not
preach,—they are poetry, and music, and irresistible eloquence.
SOURCE: Daniel
Dulany Addison, “Lucy Larcom: Life, Letters, and Diary,” p. 78-9
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