If I ascend to highest heights;
if the Spirit brings Jesus to me in unaccountable brilliance,
and the glass is wiped clear of the greater part of its darkness,

     Jesus is fairer.

If I am permitted to see what I can only call the beauty of Jesus 

in the saintliest saint,

     Jesus is fairer.

If I happen upon a grand doxology,

in which the best of the poets inscribes with the best of his best,

     Jesus is fairer.

If I could but once speak with the tongues of men and of angels,

fill with a rush of unqualified love,

     

    Jesus is fairer, and the fairest of ten thousand to my soul.

If I could compress the beauties of all God's handiwork

into one transcendent handful,

     Jesus is fairer.

If, in another handful, I could combine Sebastian Bach, Michelangelo,

Brahms, Vermeer, Rembrandt, a heaven full of angel voices,

a world of newly born babies, a galaxy of weavers, potters,

sleight-of-toe ballerinas -

If I could hold these handfuls to my hungry heart and be filled with their glory,

     Jesus is fairer.

Dear Name! 

the rock on which I build,

My shield and hiding-place,

My never-failing treasury, filled

with boundless stores of grace.

Jesus, my Shepherd, Husband, Friend,

My Prophet, Priest and King,

My Lord, my Life, my Way, my End,

Accept the praise I bring.

_______

Johannes Vermeer, "Delft"

Dumbfounded Praying, Harold M. Best, Wifp&Stock Pub., Eugene Oregon

John Newton, Olney Hymns

     

It would cure anybody to walk over the hill every morning 

as I do before sitting down to write, 

with the spruces on either hand and the green meadows beyond.  

I tramp along thanking the Lord for a life so sweet.

~ L. M. Montgomery

The image is of the Willamette Valley, Oregon by Lynnette Austen McMinn

Used by her kind permission.

This may not be LMM's Prince Edward Island, but it the country of my childhood and is deeply fixed in my soul!  Because of that I understand Maud's sentiment.  

We may be kindred spirits, Maud and I.