Oh, it is good to drink and sup,
And then beside the kindly fire
To smoke and heap the faggots up,
And rest and dream to heart's desire.
Oh, it is good to ride and run,
To roam the greenwood wild and free;
To hunt, to idle in the sun,
To leap into the laughing sea.
Oh, it is good with hand and brain
To gladly till the chosen soil,
And after honest sweat and strain
To see the harvest of one's toil.
Oh, it is good afar to roam,
And seek adventure in strange lands;
Yet oh, so good the coming home,
The velvet love of little hands.
So much is good. . . . We thank Thee, God,
For all the tokens Thou hast given,
That here on earth our feet have trod
Thy little shining trails of Heaven.
V
August 10, 1914.
I am living in a little house so near the sea that at high tide I can
see on my bedroom wall the reflected ripple of the water. At night I
waken to the melodious welter of waves; or maybe there is a great
stillness, and then I know that the sand and sea-grass are lying naked
to the moon. But soon the tide returns, and once more I hear the
roistering of the waves.
Calvert, my friend, is a lover as well as a painter of nature. He rises
with the dawn to see the morning mist kindle to coral and the sun's edge
clear the hill-crest. As he munches his coarse bread and sips his white
wine, what dreams are his beneath the magic changes of the sky! He will
paint the same scene under a dozen conditions of light. He has looked so
long for Beauty that he has come to see it everywhere.
I love this friendly home of his. A peace steals over my spirit, and I
feel as if I could stay here always. Some day I hope that I too may
have such an one, and that I may write like this: