[New-Poetry] note from Stevens' journal

[Rsgwynn1 at cs.com]

In a message dated 12/8/2007 1:27:53 PM Central Standard Time, 
JforJames at aol.com writes: 
> 
>  
>  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.
> 
> 
Pure Emerson.  I guess "Sunday Morning" is a later development of this theme, 
from an older man who enjoys his food and drink more than the younger.  
Interesting.   
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