But finds some coupling with the spinning stars;
No pebble at your foot, but proves a sphere;
... Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God:
But only he who knows takes off his shoes.”
II
THE GARDEN OF ENGLAND: THE
PATCHWORK QUILT
Even your most unadventurous fellow can hardly look on a fair prospect of fields and meadows, woods, villages with smoking chimneys, a river, and a road, without a certain feeling rising in him that he would like to tread the road that winds so dapperly through the country, and discover for himself where it leads.
To those who love their country the road is but a garden path running between borders of fair flowers whose names and virtues should be known to every child.
A poet can weave a story from the speck of mud on a fellow traveller’s boot—the red soil of a Devonshire lane calls up such pictures of fern-covered banks, such rushing streams, as make a poem in themselves.