Man Would
Desecrate It By His Touch, And So The Beauty Of The World Remains
Veiled To Him.
He needs not only to be spiritualized, but
_naturalized_, on the soil of earth.
Who shall conceive what
kind of roof the heavens might extend over him, what seasons
minister to him, and what employment dignify his life! Only the
convalescent raise the veil of nature. An immortality in his
life would confer immortality on his abode. The winds should be
his breath, the seasons his moods, and he should impart of his
serenity to Nature herself. But such as we know him he is
ephemeral like the scenery which surrounds him, and does not
aspire to an enduring existence. When we come down into the
distant village, visible from the mountain-top, the nobler
inhabitants with whom we peopled it have departed, and left only
vermin in its desolate streets. It is the imagination of poets
which puts those brave speeches into the mouths of their heroes.
They may feign that Cato's last words were
"The earth, the air, and seas I know, and all
The joys and horrors of their peace and wars;
And now will view the Gods' state and the stars,"
but such are not the thoughts nor the destiny of common men.
What is this heaven which they expect, if it is no better than
they expect? Are they prepared for a better than they can now
imagine? Where is the heaven of him who dies on a stage, in a
theatre?
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