It is not that you shall
stop making shoes, and begin to write poetry. That is just as much
discrimination as you have. Tell you to be gentle, and you think we want
you to dissolve into milk-and-water; tell you to be polite, and you
infer hypocrisy; to be neat, and you leap over into dandyism, fancying
all the while that bluster is manliness. No, Sir. You may make shoes,
you may run engines, you may carry coals; you may blow the huntsman's
horn, hurl the base-ball, follow the plough, smite the anvil; your face
may be brown, your veins knotted, your hands grimed; and yet you may be
a hero. And, on the other hand, you may write verses and be a clown.
It is not necessary to feed on ambrosia in order to become divine;
nor shall one be accursed, though he drink of the ninefold Styx. The
Israelites ate angels' food in the wilderness, and remained stiff-necked
and uncircumcised in heart and ears. The white water-lily feeds on
slime, and unfolds a heavenly glory. Come as the June morning comes. It
has not picked its way daintily, passing only among the roses. It has
breathed up the whole earth. It has blown through the fields and the
barn-yards and all the common places of the land. It has shrunk from
nothing. Its purity has breasted and overborne all things, and so
mingled and harmonized all that it sweeps around your forehead and sinks
into your heart as soft and sweet and pure as the fragrancy of Paradise.
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