I, Mary MacLane: A Diary of Human DaysMacLane, Mary
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I, Mary MacLane: A Diary of Human Days
MacLane, Mary
MacLane, Mary, 1881-1929; Montana -- Biography; Women authors, American -- Biography
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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