Status Updates From Anne de Avonlea

p.215/455. XVI. The Substance of Things Hoped For

Perhaps, after all, romance crept to one’s side like an old friend through quiet ways; perhaps…love unfolded naturally out of a beautiful friendship.

Two years is about long enough for things to stay exactly the same. If they stayed put any longer they might grow mossy.”

She had come at last, suddenly and unexpectedly, to the bend in the road, with a hundred rainbow hopes and visions—but Anne realized as well that when she rounded that curve she must leave many sweet things behind; all the little simple duties and interests which had grown so dear to her in the last two years, and which she had glorified into beauty and delight by the enthusiasm she had put into them.

“We make our own lives wherever we are, after all. They are broad or narrow abiding to what we put into them, not what we get out. Life is rich and full here…everywhere…”

“…Lines and verses are only the outward garments of the poem; the real poem is the soul within them, and that beautiful bit is the soul of an unwritten poem. It is not everyday one sees a soul…even of a poem.”

“Down in the brook— that old green mossy log with the water flowing over it in those smooth ripples that look as if they’d been combed, and that single shaft of sunshine falling right athwart it, far down into the pool. Oh, it’s the most beautiful poem I ever saw…”