but it is hard to understand
what is the glory in the sky
and on the stranger passing by.
The small sun does not rise or set;
the pavement glistens onyx-wet;
the little lights shine here and there;
a winter damp is in the air.
Yet all the gray familiar places,
all the stretts and all the faces,
wear a look of faraway.
It is an ordinary day,
yet everywhere I look I find
a beauty that I passed by blind
an hour ago. Sometimes I think
we spend our life on beauty's brink
and never open our eyes
to see how warm how close it lies.
~James Dillet Freeman