Praise to the patient lookers: they
Who find the repetitious play
Of sunlight on a bale of hay

Enough of being to amaze,
To fix the self-forgetting gaze
That makes of pure attention praise:

They are rewarded here below.
Others, unsuited for the slow
Unfolding of that kingly show,

Bypass seductions of detail;
Their vision, rapid, prying, pale,
Urges the tearing of the veil,

Sure that behind a gorgeous screen
The substances of things unseen
Are trying to tell us what they mean,

In characters the whole world tall.
These pity; for the message shall
Come clear elsewhere, or not at all.

 

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This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 21 Number 1, on page 41
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