ONE THOUSAND FAMOUS THINGS 157
No Pleasure is Comparable to This
WHAT is truth ? said jesting Pilate, and would not wait for
an answer.
Truth is a naked and open daylight that doth not show the masks
and mummeries and triumphs of the world half so stately and daintily
as candlelight.
The poet saith excellently well—It is a pleasure to stand upon the
shore and to see ships tossed upon the sea; a pleasure to stand in
the window of a castle and to see a battle, and the adventures
below; but no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage
ground of truth and to see the errors and wanderings and mists and
tempests in the vale below, so always that this prospect be with pity
and not with pride.
Certainly it is heaven upon earth to have a man's mind move in
charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.
Francis Bacon
0, It Was Very Fair
It has bem said that there is not in English literature a more tender picture of an
English scene than this by Mrs Br owning t who found the face of the country " as if
God's finger touched but did not press " in making England.
SUCH an up and down
Of verdure—nothing too much up or down,
A ripple of land ; such little hills, the sky
Can stoop to tenderly and the wheatfields climb ;
Such nooks of valleys lined with orchises,
Fed full of noises by invisible streams.
I flattered all the beauteous country round,
As poets use, the skies, the clouds, the fields,
The happy violets hiding from the roads
The primroses run down to, carrying gold ;
The tangled hedgerows, where the cows push out
Impatient horns and tolerant churning mouths
Twixt dripping ash-boughs—hedgerows aU alive
With birds and gnats and large white butter!lies
Which look as if the may-flower had caught life
And palpitated forth upon the wind;
Hills, vales, woods, netted in a silver mist,
Farms, granges, doubled up among the hills;
And cattle grazing in the watered vales,
And cottage chimneys smoking from the woods,
And cottage gardens smelling everywhere,
Confused with smell of orchards . . .
And, ankle-deep in English grass, I leaped,
And clapped my hands, and called all very fair.
Elizabeth Browning