Alas! What I Here Express I Have Long Known While I
Suffered Under An Unpropitious Heaven, And Now May I Joyful Feel
This Joy As An Exception, Which We Should Enjoy Everforth As An
Eternal Necessity Of Our Nature."
Thus we "sayled by thought and pleasaunce," as Chaucer says, and
all things seemed with us to flow; the shore itself, and the
distant cliffs, were dissolved by the undiluted air.
The hardest
material seemed to obey the same law with the most fluid, and so
indeed in the long run it does. Trees were but rivers of sap and
woody fibre, flowing from the atmosphere, and emptying into the
earth by their trunks, as their roots flowed upward to the
surface. And in the heavens there were rivers of stars, and
milky-ways, already beginning to gleam and ripple over our heads.
There were rivers of rock on the surface of the earth, and rivers
of ore in its bowels, and our thoughts flowed and circulated, and
this portion of time was but the current hour. Let us wander
where we will, the universe is built round about us, and we are
central still. If we look into the heavens they are concave, and
if we were to look into a gulf as bottomless, it would be concave
also. The sky is curved downward to the earth in the horizon,
because we stand on the plain. I draw down its skirts. The
stars so low there seem loath to depart, but by a circuitous path
to be remembering me, and returning on their steps.
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