Henry sat long before this picture, enveloped, as it were, in its rich
gloom, as the painted profundity of a church absorbs one in its depths.
And with the impression of its solemn beauty was blent a despairing awe
of the artist who, of a little coloured earth, had created such a
masterpiece of vitality, thrown on to a thin screen of canvas so
enduringly palpable, so sumptuous, and so poignantly dominating a
reflection of his visions. What a passionate energy of beauty must have
been in this man's soul; what a constant fury of meditation upon
things divine!
When Henry came back to himself, his first thought was to share it with
Angel. Little soul, how her face would flame, how her body would tremble
with the wonder of it! In the minutiae, the technicalities of
appreciation, Angel, like Henry himself, might be lacking; but in the
motive fervour of appreciation, who was like her! It was almost painful
to see the joy which certain simple wonders gave her. Anything intense
or prodigal in nature, any splendidly fluent outpouring of the
elements,--the fierce life of streaming fire, water in gliding or
tumultuous masses, the vivid gold of crocus and daffodil spouting up
through the earth in spring, the exquisite liquidity of a bird
singing,--these, as with all elemental poetic natures, gave her the
same keen joy which we fable for those who, in the intense morning of
the world, first heard them; fable, indeed, for why should we suppose
that because ears deaf a thousand years heard the nightingale too, it
should therefore be less new for those who to-night hear it for the
first time? Rather shall it be more than less for us, by the memories
transmitted in our blood from all the generations who before have
listened and gone their way.
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