In them the visible and the invisible are harmonised; in them
the real finds its completion in the ideal. The common earth is common
only to those who are deaf to the voices and blind to the visions which
wait on it and make its flight a music and its path a light. Out of
these common things the great artists build the homes of our souls.
Rock-founded are they, and broad-based on our mother earth; but they
have windows skyward, and there, above the tumult of the little earth,
the great worlds sing.
IV
You do yet taste
Some subtilities o' the isle, that will not let you
Believe things certain.
One brilliant morning, the sky cloudless and the sea singing under a
freshening wind, we sat under a great tree, with a bit of soft sward
before us, and talked of Prospero. In that place the master presence
was always with us; there was never an hour in which we did not feel
the spell of his creative spirit. We were always secretly hoping that
we should come upon him in some secluded place, his staff unbroken, and
his book undrowned. But what need had we of sight while the island
encompassed us and the multitudinous music filled the air?
On that fair morning the magical beauty of the world possessed us, and
our talk, blending unconsciously with the music of the invisible choir,
was broken by long pauses.
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