The Orator Puts Off His Individuality, And Is Then Most Eloquent
When Most Silent.
He listens while he speaks, and is a hearer
along with his audience.
Who has not hearkened to Her infinite
din? She is Truth's speaking-trumpet, the sole oracle, the true
Delphi and Dodona, which kings and courtiers would do well to
consult, nor will they be balked by an ambiguous answer. For
through Her all revelations have been made, and just in
proportion as men have consulted her oracle within, they have
obtained a clear insight, and their age has been marked as an
enlightened one. But as often as they have gone gadding abroad
to a strange Delphi and her mad priestess, their age has been
dark and leaden. Such were garrulous and noisy eras, which no
longer yield any sound, but the Grecian or silent and melodious
era is ever sounding and resounding in the ears of men.
A good book is the plectrum with which our else silent lyres are
struck. We not unfrequently refer the interest which belongs to
our own unwritten sequel, to the written and comparatively
lifeless body of the work. Of all books this sequel is the most
indispensable part. It should be the author's aim to say once
and emphatically, "He said," . This is the most the
book-maker can attain to. If he make his volume a mole whereon
the waves of Silence may break, it is well.
It were vain for me to endeavor to interrupt the Silence. She
cannot be done into English. For six thousand years men have
translated her with what fidelity belonged to each, and still she
is little better than a sealed book. A man may run on confidently
for a time, thinking he has her under his thumb, and shall one
day exhaust her, but he too must at last be silent, and men
remark only how brave a beginning he made; for when he at length
dives into her, so vast is the disproportion of the told to the
untold, that the former will seem but the bubble on the surface
where he disappeared. Nevertheless, we will go on, like those
Chinese cliff swallows, feathering our nests with the froth,
which may one day be bread of life to such as dwell by the
sea-shore.
We had made about fifty miles this day with sail and oar, and
now, far in the evening, our boat was grating against the
bulrushes of its native port, and its keel recognized the Concord
mud, where some semblance of its outline was still preserved in
the flattened flags which had scarce yet erected themselves since
our departure; and we leaped gladly on shore, drawing it up, and
fastening it to the wild apple-tree, whose stem still bore the
mark which its chain had worn in the chafing of the spring
freshets.
THE END.
End of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers by Henry David Thoreau
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