When they got to the hillock where Mother used to sit, Peter Paul took her once more into his arms.
"Good-bye, good sister," he said, "I have been back in my childhood again, and GOD knows that is both pleasant and good for one."
"And it is funny that you should say so," said Leena, smiling through her tears; "for when we were children you were never happy except in thinking of when you should be a man."
And with this salutary home-thrust (which thoroughly common-place minds have such a provoking faculty for giving) Leena went back to her children and cattle.
Happy for the artistic temperament that can profit by such rebuffs!
PART III.
Yet, how few believe such doctrine springs
From a poor root,
Which all the winter sleeps here under foot,
And hath no wings
To raise it to the truth and light of things;
But is stil trod
By ev'ry wand'ring clod.
O Thou, Whose Spirit did at first inflame
And warm the dead,
And by a sacred incubation fed
With life this frame,
Which once had neither being, forme, nor name,
Grant I may so
Thy steps track here below,