I Saw Beauty Becoming Breath

It was on the eve when Heaven itself seemed to descend ever nearer the earth as though to witness the birth of something eternal, that I first saw her. The air was a tapestry of gold and silence; the sun, in its ebbed advance, cast its embers of departing glory over the lake, and the mountains stood before me like prophets clothed in a sad and awful fire. In that stillness, she came to me — not as one walks, but as one glides — one born of the very elements of life itself.

Her hair caught the last breath of the sun, and turned to threads of light; her face, still and worn, held the stillness of the eternal. In that one moment, I felt the world falling away — the hills went dim, and the waters hushed their murmur for something better than nature had entered the realm of her beauty. My heart fell prostrate before her, as if in that moment she had communicated to me the first language of the soul, older than the act of speech, deeper than prayer.

O sweet despotism of beauty! O ruling power which diminishes the proudest imagination! From that hour, I was no longer mine. I trod the earth not as man, but as echo — an echo of that hour when Heaven bent to earth and called her by name.