The pearlit drops shook as in silver showers,
While all in balm did branche and leavis fleit.[2]
Depart fra’ Phœbus did Aurora greit;
Her chrystal tears I saw hing on the flowers
Which he, for love, all drank up with his heat.
Dunbar.
- The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
- He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me beside the still waters; He restoreth my soul.
A Psalm of David.
As I walk over the surface of this fair Earth, an erring and a wayward being, at times dejected by the trials of a solitary and an almost abortive life, or sustained or elevated by its prosperous incidents; I sometimes think that no one other blessing of existence hath ever comforted my heart and restored my soul so much, as the pleasures and delights of Colour. It is my wealth, my joy, my faculty, my fountain!
The recreative pleasure that others find in Music, although this is not denied is less to me than to them, a restorative and a balm. Music excites, arouses me; melts me into weakness, or animates me into passionate exertion; but it is in the green pasture and beside the still waters, in bowers apparelled with white and red; it is in the tints with which autumn is bedecked, and Day expires; that I feel I shall not want, and that God restoreth my soul! And it is among huge and solitary mountain masses of grey castellated rock, in the crevices of which the stinted pine, and the cedar with its brown and tattered trunk, struggle out a hard and scanty existence and are yet covered with never-fading verdure—mountains to which the Saviour of mankind might have retired to meditate and pray—that I feel that the Lord is my Shepherd, and shall bring me to the green pastures, and lead me beside the still waters; my Rock! my fortress! and my high tower!