Some Promise Of Eternal
Pleasures And Of Rest Deserved Haunted The Village Of Sillano.
In very early youth the soul can still remember its immortal
habitation, and clouds and the edges of hills are of another kind from
ours, and every scent and colour has a savour of Paradise.
What that
quality may be no language can tell, nor have men made any words, no,
nor any music, to recall it - only in a transient way and elusive the
recollection of what youth was, and purity, flashes on us in phrases
of the poets, and is gone before we can fix it in our minds - oh! my
friends, if we could but recall it! Whatever those sounds may be that
are beyond our sounds, and whatever are those keen lives which remain
alive there under memory - whatever is Youth - Youth came up that valley
at evening, borne upon a southern air. If we deserve or attain
beatitude, such things shall at last be our settled state; and their
now sudden influence upon the soul in short ecstasies is the proof
that they stand outside time, and are not subject to decay.
This, then, was the blessing of Sillano, and here was perhaps the
highest moment of those seven hundred miles - or more. Do not therefore
be astonished, reader, if I now press on much more hurriedly to Rome,
for the goal is almost between my hands, and the chief moment has been
enjoyed, until I shall see the City.
Now I cry out and deplore me that this next sixty miles of way, but
especially the heat of the days and the dank mists of the night,
should have to be told as of a real journey in this very repetitive
and sui-similar world.
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