But he who has gone to
sleep in childish ease on her lap, or leaned an aching brow upon her
breast, seeking there comfort with full trust as from a mother, will see
all a mother's beauty in the look she bends upon him. Later, I felt that
I had really seen these regions, and shall speak of them again.
In the afternoon we went on shore at the Manitou islands, where the boat
stops to wood. No one lives here except woodcutters for the steamboats.
I had thought of such a position, from its mixture of profound solitude
with service to the great world, as possessing an ideal beauty. I think
so still, after seeing the woodcutters and their slovenly huts.
In times of slower growth, man did not enter a situation without a
certain preparation or adaptedness to it. He drew from it, if not to the
poetical extent, at least, in some proportion, its moral and its
meaning. The woodcutter did not cut down so many trees a day, that the
hamadryads had not time to make their plaints heard; the shepherd tended
his sheep, and did no jobs or chores the while; the idyl had a chance to
grow up, and modulate his oaten pipe. But now the poet must be at the
whole expense of the poetry in describing one of these positions; the
worker is a true Midas to the gold he makes. The poet must describe, as
the painter sketches Irish peasant girls and Danish fishwives, adding
the beauty, and leaving out the dirt.
I come to the west prepared for the distaste I must experience at its
mushroom growth.
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