And one summer day in Central Park in New York I saw a little Yellow-Yellow Butterfly fluttering above a small plot of brilliant Green-Green Grass in the afternoon sunshine. To you, God, used to the purpling splendor of untold worlds that mightn’t seem noteworthy. But to me—because I am half-sister to so many trivialities the Yellow-Yellow of those little wings and the sweet bright Green of the clipped velvet Grass beneath the sun suddenly fiercely entered in and beat-beat hard on my imagination. O the glare and the flare of that fairy prettiness! I shall never forget that picture though I should one day see those worlds. It made me think wildly of you, God, at the time—and ever since. It is there yet in Central Park, that particular plot of Grass, and if not that Yellow-Yellow Butterfly—happily, happily Yellow it was—then another!
And to-day and often other days I read this—
‘Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter’—
—magic words: potent hushed wizardry of beauty. It opens the doors of all the Inner Rooms and more blest, more precious, of the celestial brain of him who wrote it. In making the glimmering Purple of all your worlds, God, you have not surpassed the thing you made in the regal wistful glory of John Keats.
And two nights ago I went close to my glass and looked deep into my own dark gray eyes, and they were beautiful. Their color is the gray not of peace but of stormy sky and clouded sea. Their expression is alien and melancholy and they are never without circlings of fatigue or stress. And when I meet their glance they mostly accuse and condemn and confound me. But two nights ago they grew wide and deep and breathless-looking at realizing me human and alive. And presently I saw, back of their gray iris—my Soul: like a naked girl: like a willow in the wind: like a drowning star at daybreak: an inherent inexpressible grace—my Soul of many ages.
And this moment another little memory, God, of a tropic marsh a little way back from the sea on the island in the bay at St. Augustine, as it looked in the wane of one sun-flooded February day. In the marsh were tall waving feathery salt-marsh grasses, and little pools of murky water. And there were snail-shells and ancient barnacles and smooth beach pebbles. And bordering the pools were reeds and flags and tiny wax-petaled death-white lilies. By a mound of wet moss was a slim wild blue heron standing on one leg and staring about and preening its blue feathers. And over all the scene was a Pink-Pink Flush. The curving quivering tops of the long grass were Pink with it. The pools were dull Pink mirrors. The barnacles, the pebbles, the death-white lilies were as if a thin bloody veil had been flung down on them. Pink touched the heron’s wings, its beak, its head, its glittering beady eyes and spindly leg. The sinking sun shot a Pink broadside of dream-dust all over the marsh: it lingered and hung and floated. Almost I could have reached out my two hands and gathered a bouquet of Pink Flush. The stillness, which was intense, was Pink stillness. O but it was pleasant, pleasant, pleasant, God—it wrapped me in a scarf of Pink sweetness: it filled my throat with Pink honey: it laid on me a gentle eager quiet covetous Pink spell.
Nobody knows how you do it, God. But it is all—Sunset Tint, Yellow-Yellow Moth, Conscious Soul, Poet-Flame—maddening and precious and terrifying and transfiguring to me who live among it. I cherish it as a lonely one may who loves it with passion and is never happy in it. And for it all I thank you, God.
Yours very sincerely,
Mary MacLane.
I wrote the Letter on my long-unused monogram note-paper to please my whim, and put it in the envelope and addressed it to God, care of the Whistling Winds. He may receive it—what do I know?—only he knows, and is reticent.