[New-Poetry] note from Stevens' journal

[JforJames at aol.com]

I ran across this on the net, and thought I'd post it to the list...
 
>From his Journal -- Sunday, August 10, 1902 [New York}

I've had a handsome day of it and am contented again. Left the house  after 
breakfast and went by ferry and trolley to Hackensack over in Jersey. From  H. 
I walked 5 1/2 miles on the Spring Valley road, then 4 miles to Ridgewood,  
then another mile to Hoboken and back towards town 7 miles more to Paterson: 17  
1/2 in all, a good day's jaunt at this time of the year. Came from Paterson 
to  Hoboken by trolley and then home. In the early part of the day I saw some 
very  respectable country which, as usual, set me contemplating. I love to walk 
along  with a slight wind playing in the trees about me and think over a 
thousand and  one odds and ends. Last night I spent an hour in the dark transept 
of St.  Patrick's Cathedral where I go now and then in my more lonely moods. An 
old  argument with me is that the true religious force in the world is not 
the  church, but the world itself: the mysterious callings of Nature and our  
responses. What incessant murmurs fill that ever-laboring, tireless church! But  
to-day in my walk I thought that after all there is no conflict of forces but 
 rather a contrast. In the cathedral I felt one presence; on the highway I 
felt  another. Two different deities presented themselves; and though I have 
only  cloudy visions of either, yet I now feel the distinction between them. The  
priest in me worshipped one God at one shrine; the poet another God at 
another  shrine. The priest worshipped Mercy and Love; the poet, Beauty and Might. 
In the  shadows of the church I could hear the prayers of men and women; in the 
shadows  of the trees nothing human mingled with Divinity. As I sat dreaming 
with the  Congregation I felt how the glittering alter worked on my senses 
stimulating and  consoling them; and as I went tramping through the fields and 
woods I beheld  every leaf and blade of grass revealing or rather betokening the 
 Invisible.




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