Hence it comes that little hitherto unnoticed motions are adored: You need but lift a pearl-pale hand, And bind up your long hair and sigh; And all men's hearts must burn and beat. This woman is less the beloved than the priestess of beauty who reveals the divinity, not as the inspired prophetesses filled with the Holy Breath did in the ancient mysteries, but in casual gestures and in a waving of her white arms, in the stillness of her eyes, in her hair which trembles like a faery flood of unloosed shadowy light over pale breasts, and in many glimmering motions so beautiful that it is at once seen whose footfall it is we hear, and that the place where she stands is holy ground. This, it seems to me, is what is essential in this poetry, what is peculiar and individual in it--the revelation of great mysteries in unnoticed things; and as not a sparrow may fall unconsidered by Him, so even in the swaying of a human hand His sceptre may have dominion over the heart and His paradise be entered in the lifting of an eyelid. 1902 THE BOYHOOD OF A POET When I was a boy I knew another who has since become famous and who has now written Reveries over Childhood and Youth. I searched the pages to meet the boy I knew and could not find him. He has told us what he saw and what he remembered of others, but from himself he seems to have passed away and remembers himself not. The boy I knew was darkly beautiful to look on, fiery yet playful and full of lovely and elfin fancies. He was swift of response, indeed over-generous to the fancies of others because a nature so charged with beauty could not but emit beauty at every challenge. Even so water, however ugly the object we cast upon it, can but break out in a foam of beauty and a bewilderment of lovely curves.