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ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE
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"I come in the little things, saith the Lord." How true!
"I come in the little things, Saith the Lord:
Yea! on the glancing wings
Of eager birds, the softly pattering feet Of furred and gentle beasts, I come to meet Your hard and wayward heart.
"Life is sweet, brother. . . . There's night and day, brother, both sweet things; sun, moon and stars, brother, all sweet things; there's likewise a wind on the heath." But lest this verges on the merely charming, let us add to Borrow, "there is also toast for tea and the smell of the dust-bin next door"-which are equally things, whether we slap on them the labels of sweet or otherwise.
English poets know, too, of Zen's immediacy, of its sense of the absolute moment. In Arthur Symons' "Credo" we find,
נני
"For of our time we lose so large a part In serious trifles, and so oft let slip The wine of every moment, at the lip Its moment, and the moment of the heart."
But when is a trifle important or unimportant? The answer is clear: When the goose is out of the bottle. And our poets know of "here". As W. J. Gabb explains,
"Seek and ye shall find.
There is nothing to be found;
But here is a cart; Look, the wheels go round.
1 Immanence, EVELYN UNDERHILL.
