“Oh, he might have been a Rooshian,
A Greek, a Turk, a Prooshian,
But in spite of all temptati-on
To belong to another nati-on
He was an Englishman!”
Yes, he was.
The time comes to draw a line and strike a balance, and that is not an easy thing to do. Life to me has meant love, and, as Antony says, “there’s beggary in love that can be measured.” My gains are not to be set down. Many things are true until they are set down in words. A pressed flower is not a flower at all.
I went to Russia to see the world, to see new life, to breathe in new life. In truth it was like escaping from a prison, and now when I take a walk in London streets it seems as if I am taking the regulation exercise in a prison yard. And the dirty rags of London sky look like a tramp’s washing spread on the roots to dry. Still, it is given that we live even in prisons and under such skies for certain purposes. The towns have their beauties and mysteries even as the mountains have. I, least of all, have reason to be despondent there, for, like the companion of Christian, I have in my bosom that key which is called Promise.
At my room in the mill at Vladikavkaz I commonly looked out upon three pictures. In the foreground was a row of trembling poplars, and beyond these was a beautiful soft green hill, and beyond all a great grey mystic range of mountains. I call them the Present, the Future and the Eternal. The pleasant waving poplars were very real, very clear, and every leaf stood out distinctly, but on the green hill the trees were so many that I could not pick one out and see it clearly. It tempted me to go there and explore. The hill was full of allurement and charm, as it were, of the deep eyes of a woman as yet unknown but destined to be loved. It betrayed a mystery which it did not reveal.
Moreover, the green hill seemed to be the best standing place for looking into that vision of the eternal, of the ever-present mystery of Man and his Life. The mountains seemed to be the Ikon in God’s open-air room, His vast chamber of Nature.