Who, that has been a child, has not felt this surprise of beauty,
the revelation, the call of it?
The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion ...
--yes, or a rainbow on the spray against a cliff; or a vista of
lawns between descending woods; or a vision of fish moving in a
pool under the hazel's shadow? Who has not felt the small
surcharged heart labouring with desire to express it?
I preach to you that the base of all Literature, of all Poetry,
of all Theology, is one, and stands on one rock: _the very
highest Universal Truth is something so simple that a child may
understand it._ This, surely, was in Jesus' mind when he said `I
thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast
hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed
them unto babes.'
For as the Universe is one, so the individual human souls, that
apprehend it, have no varying values intrinsically, but one equal
value. They vary but in power to apprehend, and this may be more
easily hindered than helped by the conceit begotten of finite
knowledge. I shall even dare to quote of this Universal Truth,
the words I once hardily put into the mouth of John Wesley
concerning divine Love: 'I see now that if God's love reach up to
every star and down to every poor soul on earth, it must be
vastly simple; so simple that all dwellers on Earth may be
assured of it--as all who have eyes may be assured of the planet
shining yonder at the end of the street--and so vast that all
bargaining is below it, and they may inherit it without
considering their deserts.' I believe this to be strictly and
equally true of the appeal which Poetry makes to each of us,
child or man, in his degree. As Johnson said of Gray's "Elegy,"
it 'abounds with images which find a mirror in every mind, and
with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo.' It exalts
us through the best of us, by telling us something new yet not
strange, something that we _recognise,_ something that we too
have known, or surmised, but had never the delivering speech to
tell. 'There is a pleasure in poetic pains,' says Wordsworth:
but, Gentlemen, if you have never felt the travail, yet you have
still to understand the bliss of deliverance.