‘_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.
And this moment another little memory, God, of a tropic marsh
a little way back from the sea on the island in the bay at
St. Augustine, as it looked in the wane of one sun-flooded February
day. In the marsh were tall waving feathery salt-marsh grasses,
and little pools of murky water. And there were snail-shells and
ancient barnacles and smooth beach pebbles. And bordering the pools
were reeds and flags and tiny wax-petaled death-white lilies. By a
mound of wet moss was a slim wild blue heron standing on one leg and
staring about and preening its blue feathers. And over all the scene
was a Pink-Pink Flush. The curving quivering tops of the long grass
were Pink with it. The pools were dull Pink mirrors. The barnacles,
the pebbles, the death-white lilies were as if a thin bloody veil
had been flung down on them. Pink touched the heron’s wings, its
beak, its head, its glittering beady eyes and spindly leg. The
sinking sun shot a Pink broadside of dream-dust all over the marsh:
it lingered and hung and floated. Almost I could have reached out my
two hands and gathered a bouquet of Pink Flush. The stillness, which
was intense, was Pink stillness. O but it was pleasant, pleasant,
pleasant, God--it wrapped me in a scarf of Pink sweetness: it filled
my throat with Pink honey: it laid on me a gentle eager quiet
covetous Pink spell.
Nobody knows how you do it, God. But it is all--Sunset Tint,
Yellow-Yellow Moth, Conscious Soul, Poet-Flame--maddening and
precious and terrifying and transfiguring to me who live among it. I
cherish it as a lonely one may who loves it with passion and is never
happy in it. And for it all I thank you, God.
Yours very sincerely,
Mary MacLane.
I wrote the Letter on my long-unused monogram note-paper to please my
whim, and put it in the envelope and addressed it to God, care of the
Whistling Winds. He may receive it--what do I know?--only _he_ knows,
and is reticent.