![]() ![]() ![]() There is one fable that touches very near the quick of life, - the fable of the monk who passed into the woods, heard a bird break into song, hearkened for a trill or two, and found himself at his return a stranger at his convent gates for he had been absent fifty years, and of all his comrades there survived but one to recognize him. Robert Louis Stevenson by William Notman © National Portrait Gallery, London That is what Robert Louis Stevenson (November 13, 1850–December 3, 1894) explores in some breathtaking passages from his long essay “The Lantern-Bearers,” found in his 1892 collection of personal writings Across the Plains ( public library | free ebook). It is a dangerous falsehood that to find wonder in reality is to relinquish our realism - rather, this attentive gladness, this fluency in the native poetry of the universe, may be the truest realism we have. ![]() If wonder springs from the quality of attention we pay to things and joy springs from our capacity for presence with wonder, then the quality of our attention shapes the quality of our lives. ![]()
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