There exists in the soul of the graciously imaginative a peculiar and exquisite faculty—a secret vestibule through which he enters into pleasures forbidden to the coarse and uninitiated. To such a one, a picture is no mere arrangement of paint and pigment, but a silent interlocutor, speaking in a dialect more intimate than words. A statue, in its stillness, becomes not cold stone but a companion in repose, offering the quiet solidarity of a soul preserved in form. In the pages of a description—mere ink to the indifferent—he discovers a hidden spring, a draught more refreshing than many a reality.
Indeed, he finds in the distant prospect of meadows and fields a kind of joy more potent than that which another might wrest from their ownership. For ownership may command the soil, but imagination communes with the spirit of the landscape. It is as though the world, unbidden, opens its deeper chambers to him: the rustle of leaves becomes an overture, the bending of grass a benediction, and the flight of birds a fleeting hymn. The very raw and unruly elements of nature—those that to others appear as mere background or inconvenience—are transfigured in his perception into ministers of delight, attendants at the altar of his contemplative joy.
Such a person is not merely a spectator but a participant in creation’s ongoing liturgy. Where the multitude sees only what is practical or profitable, he perceives the gleam of eternity behind the veil of the temporal. It is not so much that he imposes beauty upon the world, but that his soul is tuned finely enough to detect the music already playing. And so he walks among common things as a prince in disguise, quietly gathering treasures unvalued by the world and unperceived by the vulgar eye.
