To see no other verdure than its own:
To feel no other breezes than are blown
Through the tall woods with high romances blent;
Yet do I sometimes feel a languishment
For skies Italian....”
Keats.
June 29, 1915.—The feast of Peter and Paul comes round with a new significance. In war time we learn the meaning of so much that has seemed unimportant; of things hidden away at the back of our consciousness—things neglected, unknown, or even despised—and we learn, too, the worthlessness of so much that has seemed paramount and necessary, desirable and precious. War is a stern master. He teaches above all the relative values; how to weigh the greater against the less; how to fling away with one superb gesture the whole sum of human possessions for a single imperishable prize.
“What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own soul?”
He who spoke these words gently to a handful of poor Jews now seems to cry them with a voice of thunder from end to end of the earth.