“And vital feelings of delight
Shall rear her form to stately height”
is only a metrical expression of a great and practical truth. You do not need to be a “Christian Scientist” to know that ideas and emotions can affect the stoop of the shoulders or the lines of the mouth. Other people besides “Eugenists” have observed that ugly or mean-spirited parents seldom have beautiful children.
But though the power of ideas is a commonplace, and though psychologists tell us how much we may improve mental concentration by letting the words of any sentence call up each its own picture, what they a omit to do is to recognise the need of the human spirit for beauty. You can concentrate your thought on the list of pickles in a grocer's price list: it is doubtless a good exercise. But the same exercise directed to some great phrase, such as Emerson's Trust thyself: ever' heart vibrates to that iron string; or some vivid lyrical image such as All the trees of the field shall clap their hands, or even a complete poem of simple words but permanent beauty, such as that one of Wordsworth's beginning I wandered lonely as a Cloud; this will not only improve concentration and sharpen memory: it will enrich the mind with ever-available sources of inspiration, courage and joy.
Edgar J. Saxon.
THE WORLD'S WANDERERS.
Tell me, thou star, whose wings of light
Speed thee in thy fiery flight,
In what cavern of the night
Will thy pinions close now?
Tell me, moon, thou pale and grey
Pilgrim of heaven's homeless way,
In what depth of night or day.
Seekest thou repose now?
Weary wind, who wanderest
Like the world's rejected guest,
Hast thou still some secret nest
On the tree or billow?
Percy Bysshe Shelley.