The Choir Invisible

Of this and more he felt at once the truth, since of all earthly books known

to him this contained the most heavenly revelation of what a man may be in

manliness, in gentleness, and in goodness. And as he read the nobler

portions of the book, the nobler parts of his nature gave out their

immediate response.

Hungrily he hurried to and fro across the harvest of those fertile pages,

gathering of the white wheat of the spirit many a lustrous sheaf: the love

of courage, the love of courtesy, the love of honour, the love of high aims

and great actions, the love of the poor and the helpless, the love of a

spotless name and a spotless life, the love of kindred, the love of

friendship, the love of humility of spirit, the love of forgiveness, the

love of beauty, the love of love, the love of God. Surely, he said to

himself, within the band of these virtues lay not only a man's noblest life,

but the noblest life of the world.

While fondling these, he failed not to notice how the great book, as though

it were a living mouth, spat its deathless scorn upon the things that he

also--in the imperfect measure of his powers--had always hated: all

cowardice of mind or body, all lying, all oppression, all unfaithfulness,

all secret revenge and hypocrisy and double-dealing: the smut of the heart

and mind.

But ah! the other things besides these.

Sown among the white wheat of the spirit were the red tares of the flesh;

and as he strode back and forth through the harvest, he found himself

plucking these also with feverish vehemence. There were things here that he

had never seen in print: words that he had never even named to his secret

consciousness; thoughts and desires that he had put away from his soul with

many a struggle, many a prayer; stories of a kind that he had always

declined to hear when told in companies of men: all here, spelled out,

barefaced, without apology, without shame: the deposits of those old, old

moral voices and standards long since buried deep under the ever rising

level of the world's whitening holiness.

With utter guilt and shame he did not leave off till he had plucked the last

red tare; and having plucked them, he had hugged the whole inflaming bundle

against his blood--his blood now flushed with youth, flushed with health,

flushed with summer.

And finally, in the midst of all these things, perhaps coloured by them,

there had come to him the first great awakening of his life in a love that

was forbidden.