are hollowed out for mean needs and become the humble table for the
dog and the sow, you are pierced so that the singing harvest may be
ground beneath the millstone, you are cut, you are taken, you are
tossed aside, on you the wanderer will sleep, Oh, you under whom I
shall sleep....

You have not guarded your independence like your alpine companions.
But, Oh my friends, I do not despise you for that. You are beautiful
like the things which are in the shadow.




NOTES


Then, behold me on my return to this old parlor where I look upon
the least object with tenderness. This shawl belonged to my paternal
grandmother whom I never knew and who rests amid flowers in a humble
cemetery of the Antilles. May the humming-birds glitter and cry above
her deserted grave, and the tobacco-plants with their rosy bells
delight her memory ... I have never seen the portrait which represents
her. But I know she had a reputation for goodness and beauty. I have
read admirable letters that she wrote from there to my father when he
was a child. He had been brought back to France to be educated here,
and had remained here.

How often have I dreamed of reviving this past. How beautiful it
would be if God gave us, once a year, the festival of seeing our dear
departed return. I love to imagine it as occurring on Twelfth Night