But we might reach it sooner than we do were it not for
our own impatience. Growth is so exquisitely minute, it bursts upon us
an accomplished fact. We know this, and yet we would see the process;
and not seeing it we lose faith, waver, hesitate, stop, and recoil--a
going back _pour mieux sauter_ it is with the choicer spirit; but
we all are deficient in hope, all have our retrograde moments of
despair. We do not look about us enough to see what is being done for
others, how they are progressing, by what strange paths they are led.
We keep our eyes on our own ground too much, and, because we will not
compare cheerfully, we think our own way the roughest, our own journey
the longest--if there be any end to it at all! Yet all the time we
might see the end if only we would look up. And we need never despair
and lag, need never be cold and comfortless, if we would but love and
remember.
For, while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far out, through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main!
Ideala raises her eyes to mine now, and smiles as she passes beneath my
window.
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