Thus, in that green age I
spoke of, one's sickly vision can but see the dusty, world-worn side of
domesticity, the petty daily cares of living, the machinery, so to say,
of 'house and home.' But when one stands in another home, where these
are necessarily unseen by us, stands with the young husband, the
poetry-maker, how different it all seems. One sees the creation bloom
upon it; one ceases to blaspheme, and learns to bless. Later, when at
length one understands why it is sweeter to say 'wife' than
'sweetheart,' how even one may be reconciled to calling one's Daffodilia
'little mother'--because of the children, you know; it would never do
for them to say Daffodilia--then he will understand too how those petty
details, formerly so '_banal_,' are, after all, but notes in the music,
and what poetry can flicker, like its own blue flame, around even the
joint purchase of a frying-pan.
That Narcissus ever understood this great old poetry he owes to George
Muncaster. In the very silence of his home one hears a singing--'There
lies the happiest land.' It was one of his own quaint touches that the
first night we found his nest, after the maid had given us admission,
there should be no one to welcome us into the bright little parlour but
a wee boy of four, standing in the doorway like a robin that has hopped
on to one's window-sill. But with what a dear grace did the little chap
hold out his hand and bid us good evening, and turn his little morsel of
a bird's tongue round our names; to be backed at once by a ring of
laughter from the hidden 'prompter' thereupon revealed.
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