What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare. -- from "Leisure," by W.H. Davies

Pearls before breakfast - do we really notice beauty when we see it?

Can one of the nation's greatest musicians cut through the fog of a D.C. rush hour? In an issue of the Washington Post Magazine Gene Weingarten sets out to discover if violinist Joshua Bell -- and his Stradivarius -- could stop busy commuters in their tracks.

The poet Billy Collins once laughingly observed that all babies are born with a knowledge of poetry, because the lub-dub of the mother's heart is in iambic meter. Then, Collins said, life slowly starts to choke the poetry out of us. It may be true with music, too.

If we can't take the time out of our lives to stay a moment and listen to one of the best musicians on Earth play some of the best music ever written; if the surge of modern life so overpowers us that we are deaf and blind to something like that -- then what else are we missing?

Read the full article at the Washington Post.