The Hive

ed of my house and my voice-close to the end of all human interest that morning as I set out for a walk up the edge of the Lake. On and on walking, until I came to the little girl on the shore.

ll the fusion-en rapport with nature, children of the light, living and abiding constantly in the essences of sunlight-with the humour

and stretched forth to take me to her mother (this day called the Lonely Queen, for they live in an enchanted story-book). A climb to the top of the bluff and into the most fragrant and godly lane, a low house in the distance in the shelter of beeches-solitary and isolate beeches sheltering a human house, built for sunshine long ago. Many pages would not tell o

tter for supper, peaches of the mother's canning-a last jar, she said, with comb-honey for sweetening and golden cream on top. It was a repast for t

air, and these two mystic presences subduing their radiance to sit with me?... There's a little can of tea that is opened the last thing after the table is spread; the brass kettle begins to sing, and the mother hovers over-a kind o

ppear, but their spirits draw farther apart.... There is never a drone of talk where they are ... sentences and silences, the myriad voices of evening stealing into the hus

superb men and women, the vastness of leisure, the structural verity of joy, a new dimension in the human mind, a new colour and redolence in the light that plays upon the teeming world. Not for years had I been so near to the dithyrambic.... I went out into the d

ovisation possibly-two voices hushed, but a vibration of clear liquid joy. I went to the window. The earth was still asleep-a pearl-grey world of dripping trees in a kind of listening ecstasy-two beings below on the lawn-a lawn that was grey with dew. It was like loo

from the mother and child. They knelt in the grass, the song more hushed, bringing up to their faces and shoulders hands that dripped with the holy distillations of the night-a wash in dew and day, the

when we put on the garments of the world.... They talked again about what the birds hear in the morning. They said that what the birds sing is their interpretation of the great song

es through, is the awakening song of steel and carbon to their native capacity and direction. The same is in the heart of a boy when he finds his task-the same is

d insupportable. I had thought much about bringing up children, about unfolding the child, and here it was being worked out with brimmin

ed together-that was the point. Play is a liberation of force-great play is ecstasy. In it one rises to the stillness of production, where

that I do not refer now to the dance as it is taught and used and exploited as a social accomplishment, but that in which the personality is subdued and quiescent, quite as absolutely as it is in all great m

eness, the first

s interprets the exact figure of each tone-set. This is impossible in a world of mutation. Accordingly, one who establishes a series of movements to accompany a certain harmony, misses the meaning of the divine imp

of spontaneity. The prime object of the new education, which includes dancing, is to

e, I saw stars and circles of young women and girls folding and bending together in exquisite tones of colour and song. Her gift was the new dancing. Over night she had captured the young people, bringing

ement. Not dancing, which is a response to time in music more than to rhythm, but the actual bl

s absolute Beauty streams. The response to the music may be totally different with several pupils, but where the dancer is really lost to the objective world, the movement is always true and satisfying to those who watch. This is easy for those who are clos

t may be a purer channel for the music, and to facilitate the effacement of self. Physical stren

uries abusing his ancient right, but through music he may realise again the harmony of all. The dancer is radiant with the splendour of the infinite and

beauty of those exalted moments when they touch "the white radiance of eternity." Here is natural education, natur

which the Soul becomes the creature-for the period achieving that blessedness which is abo

ing of the word Democracy-equality, liberation. The very spirit of all that is new demands freedom. The deeper one penetrates, the lovelier t

awlessness at first, but that will right itself more swiftly than smugness, which has had its age-long and hideous trial.... To me, the house in the beeches slowly unfolds it all-the mystery of the cosmic peasantry of the future-that fastidious poverty, that deli

rapes and olives and laurel-boughs; she seemed the sister to the child. All about the two were subtle, pervasive, ever-changing tests of the power of the soul. The country people around did not think her extraordinary, much less beautiful. How much is revealed in that? Loveliness requires certain vision, an interpretative sp

me to it-a mat of grass before it, kusa grass, who knows?... A great Cross, a much-worshipped Cross, with spike-holes, the broken edges worn smooth.... The child whispered to me

have never before been so disturbed by the sense of inadequacy. Th