At this period she
wrote to her friend, Mrs. H. M. Rogers: "K. and I read the Bhagavad
Gita every day of our lives, and when we get to the end we begin again!
It is a great thing to keep one's mind full of it, permeated as it were;
and I think Mohini's own words are a great help and inspiration every-
where, all through it as well as in the beautiful introduction. I have
written out clearly on the margin of my copy every text which he has
quoted from the Scriptures, and find it most interesting. 'Truth is
one.'"
Nothing was ever "born anew" in Celia Thaxter which she did not strive
to share with others. She could keep nothing but secrets to herself.
Joys, experiences of every kind, sorrows and misfortunes, except when
they could darken the lives of others, were all brought open handed
and open hearted, to those she loved. Her generosity knew no limits.
There is a description by her of the flood which swept over her being,
and seemed to carry her away from the earth, when she once saw the
great glory of the Lord in a rainbow at the island. She hid her face
from the wonder; it was more than she could bear. "I felt then," she
said, "how I longed to speak these things which made life so sweet,
--to speak the wind, the cloud, the bird's flight, the sea's murmur,
--and ever the wish grew;" and so it was she became, growing from and
with this wish, a poet the world will remember. Dr. Holmes said once
in conversation that he thought the value of a poet to the world was
not so much the pleasure that this or that poem might give to certain
readers, or even perchance to posterity, as the fact that a poet was
known to be one who was sometimes rapt out of himself into the region
of the Divine; that the spirit had descended upon him and taught him
what he should speak.
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