Letter XVIII
Hyperion to Bellarmin
Amongst the flowers her heart was at home, as if it were one of them.
She called them all by name, made them new and more beautiful names out of love and unerringly knew the happiest season of each.
Like a sister when from every nook a loved one comes clamouring, each wanting to be greeted first, so this still being was busy with hand and eye, blissfully distracted, whenever we walked through wood or meadow.
And this wasn’t at all learned or assumed, in her it had naturally grown.
For it’s a truth eternally valid and everywhere manifest: the more innocent and beautiful a soul, the closer the bond with those other happy lives that we call soulless.