Christian Science
teaches that the real man exists now at the standpoint of perfection, and from that vantage point he sees all things as they actually exist.
Longfellow's "Santa Filomena," from which these lines are quoted, was inspired by what one English soldier out in the Crimea wrote home about Florence Nightingale: "She would speak to one and another and nod and smile to many more; but she could not do it to all, you know, for we lay there by hundreds; but we could kiss her shadow as it fell, and lay our heads on our pillows again content.
