They have had their visions and made them
music; they have caught faint echoes of rushing seas and falling tides;
the shadows of mountains have fallen upon them with low whisperings of
unspeakable things hidden in the unexplored recesses of their
solitudes; they have searched the limitless arch of heaven when it was
sown with stars, and glittered like "an archangel full panoplied
against a battle day;" but in all their quest the sublime unity of
Nature, the fellowship of force with force, of sea with sky, of
moisture with light, of form with colour, has found at their hands no
such transcendent demonstration as this fragile rose, which to-night
brings from the great temple to this little shrine the perfume and the
royalty of obedience to the highest laws, and reverence for the
divinest mysteries. Here sky and earth and sea meet in a union which
no science can dissolve, because God has joined them together. Could I
but penetrate the mystery which lies at the heart of this fragile
flower, I should possess the secret of the universe; I should
understand the ancient miracle which has baffled wisdom from the
beginning and will not discover itself to the end of time.
If I permit my thought to rest upon this fragrant flower, to touch
petal and stem and root, and unite them with the vast world in which,
by a universal contribution of force, they have come to maturity, I
find myself face to face with the oldest and the deepest questions men
have ever sought to answer.
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