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The day of Rhodora's wedding arrived, and we went down together to Grandmother's lovely old country home a stately house upon the banks of a wide, frozen river. Our train brought us there two hours before the one set for the ceremony, and we found not only Grandmother but Rhodora and the Preacher in the fine old-time drawing-room to greet us.
One characteristic of lyric poetry is the clearness with which single details or isolated objects in Nature may be visualized and reproduced. The modern reflective lyric, it is true, often depends for its power upon some philosophical generalization from a single instance, like Emerson's "Rhodora" or Wordsworth's "Small Celandine."
"I have never supposed grandmothers," said the Skeptic thoughtfully, "to be particularly influential members of society. Evidently ours is different. But there must have been other elements in the metamorphosis of Rhodora." "Miss Eleanor Lockwood's school," suggested Hepatica. "You mention that with bated breath," said the Skeptic, "precisely as every one, including its graduates, mentions it.
As Hepatica read it aloud we stared at one another, astonished. The letter was from Grandmother, inviting us to Rhodora's wedding, which was to take place under her roof. Rhodora herself had been practically under Grandmother's roof for four years now, except as she had been sent to a school of Grandmother's selection. Rhodora had no mother.
It must therefore stand as a part and not as yet the highest expression of the final cause of Nature.". In the "Rhodora" the flower is made to answer that "Beauty is its own excuse for being." In this Essay the beauty of the flower is not enough, but it must excuse itself for being, mainly as the symbol of something higher and deeper than itself. He passes next to a consideration of Language.
It must therefore stand as a part and not as yet the highest expression of the final cause of Nature.". In the "Rhodora" the flower is made to answer that "Beauty is its own excuse for being." In this Essay the beauty of the flower is not enough, but it must excuse itself for being, mainly as the symbol of something higher and deeper than itself. He passes next to a consideration of Language.
"Sabbatia sprays, those rosy ghosts that haunt the Plymouth ponds," "the cardinal, with the very glitter of the stream it loves meshed like a silver mist behind its scarlet sheen," "the wide rhodora marshes, where some fleece of burning mist seemed to be fallen and caught and tangled in countless filaments upon the bare twigs," such traits as these are not to be found in the newspapers nor in the botanies.
The Preacher stood up very straight while he was being married, and though his boyish cheek paled and reddened again as the ceremony proceeded, his responses were clear-cut. Rhodora made a bonny bride.
She wore sleeves to her elbows, and her arms were round and firm. She sat in a nonchalant attitude in which her arms were considerably in evidence. "Rhodora," said Grandmother, turning to look our way, "did I bring my little black silk bag from the carriage?" "Didn't see it," replied Rhodora. "Which way is Bluebeard Mountain?" she inquired of me. The Gay Lady and I arose at the same instant.
It is lacking in passion, in poetic glow for how can fire come out of an iceberg? but about some of it there is the clean-cut beauty of the cameo. You know, of course, his immortal quatrain, Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing, Then Beauty is its own excuse for being.
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