“To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”
I have often wished to hear a sermon arguing from this thought the
existence of God and the immortality of the soul. The peculiar nature
of the soul, that transmutes sensation into divine emotion—a sweetness,
longing, and reverence that are not of earth—is it not suggestive of
all that is claimed by religious faith? Wordsworth rightly ascribed a
dwarfed nature to him who sees only meaningless form and dull color in
the flower:
“A primrose by a river’s brim
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more.”
That education is inadequate which ignores the value of man’s æsthetic
nature and neglects its growth.