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Allen, James Lane, 1849-1925

"The Choir Invisible"


Her beauty had never failed. Nature had fought hard in her for all things;
and to the last youth of her womanhood it burned like an autumn rose which
some morning we may have found on the lawn under a dew that is turning to
ice. But when youth was gone, in the following years her face began to
reflect the freshness of Easter lilies. For prayer will in time make the
human countenance its own divinest alter; years upon years of true thoughts,
like ceaseless music shut up within, will vibrate along the nerves of
expression until the lines of the living instrument are drawn into
correspondence, and the harmony of visible form matches the unheard
harmonies of the mind. It was about this time also that there fell upon her
hair the earliest rays of the light which is the dawn of Eternal Morning.
She had never ceased to watch his career as part of her very life. Time was
powerless to remove him farther from her than destiny had removed him long
before: it was always yesterday; the whole past with him seemed caught upon
the clearest mirror just at her back. Once or twice a year she received a
letter, books, papers, something; she had been kept informed of the birth of
his children.


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