The gift: to give

In response to my post a few days ago (on aiming to perfect), a friend and kindred spirit sent me the lovely excerpt below. I identified with it so, and found so much beauty in it, that true to it's own core, I could not resist the urge to share it with you all. There is a special elixir of life that is captured right here, in these words by L. M. Montgomery. I leave it here, for you to find.

Emily always looked back to that night spent under the stars as a sort of milestone. Everything in it and of it ministered to her. It filled her with its beauty, which she must later give to the world. She wished that she could coin some magic word that might express it.

The round moon rose. Did an old witch in a high-crowned hat ride past it on a broomstick? No, it was only a bat and the little tip of a hemlock-tree by the fence. She made a poem on it at once, the lines singing themselves through her consciousness without effort. With one side of her nature she liked writing prose best--with the other she liked writing poetry. This side was uppermost to-night and her very thoughts ran into rhyme. A great, pulsating star hung low in the sky over Indian Head. Emily gazed on it and recalled Teddy's old fancy of his previous existence in a star. The idea seized on her imagination and she spun a dream-life, lived in some happy planet circling round that mighty, far-off sun. Then came the northern lights--drifts of pale fire over the sky--spears of light, as of empyrean armies--pale, elusive hosts retreating and advancing. Emily lay and watched them in rapture. Her soul was washed pure in that great bath of splendour. She was a high priestess of loveliness assisting at the divine rites of her worship--and she knew her goddess smiled.

She was glad Ilse was asleep. Any human companionship, even the dearest and most perfect, would have been alien to her then. She was sufficient unto herself, needing not love nor comradeship nor any human emotion to round out her felicity. Such moments come rarely in any life, but when they do come they are inexpressibly wonderful--as if the finite were for a second infinity--as if humanity were for a space uplifted into divinity--as if all ugliness had vanished, leaving only flawless beauty. Oh--beauty-- Emily shivered with the pure ecstasy of it. She loved it--it filled her being to-night as never before. She was afraid to move or breathe lest she break the current of beauty that was flowing through her. Life seemed like a wonderful instrument on which to play supernal harmonies.

"Oh, God, make me worthy of it--oh, make me worthy of it," she prayed. Could she ever be worthy of such a message--could she dare try to carry some of the loveliness of that "dialogue divine" back to the everyday world of sordid market-place and clamorous street? She MUST give it--she could not keep it to herself. Would the world listen--understand--feel? Only if she were faithful to the trust and gave out that which was committed to her, careless of blame or praise. High priestess of beauty--yes, she would serve at no other shrine!

She fell asleep in this rapt mood--dreamed that she was Sappho springing from the Leucadian rock--woke to find herself at the bottom of the haystack with Ilse's startled face peering down at her. Fortunately so much of the stack had slipped down with her that she was able to say cautiously,

"I think I'm all in one piece still."