I saw the strand by Croton; the
promontory with its temple; not as I know the scene to-day,
But as
it must have looked to those eyes more than two thousand years ago.
The soldiers of Hannibal doing massacre, the perishing mercenaries,
supported my closest gaze, and left no curiosity unsatisfied. (Alas!
could I but see it again, or remember clearly what was shown tome!)
And over all lay a glory of sunshine, an indescribable brilliancy
which puts light and warmth into my mind whenever I try to recall
it. The delight of these phantasms was well worth the ten days'
illness which paid for them. After this night they never returned; I
hoped for their renewal, but in vain. When I spoke of the experience
to Dr. Sculco, he was much amused, and afterwards he often asked me
whether I had had any more visioni. That gate of dreams was
closed, but I shall always feel that, for an hour, it was granted to
me to see the vanished life so dear to my imagination. If the
picture corresponded to nothing real, tell me who can, by what power
I reconstructed, to the last perfection of intimacy, a world known
to me only in ruined fragments.
Daylight again, but no gleam of sun. I longed for the sunshine; it
seemed to me a miserable chance that I should lie ill by the Ionian
Sea and behold no better sky than the far north might have shown me.
That grey obstruction of heaven's light always weighs upon my
spirit; on a summer's day, there has but to pass a floating cloud,
which for a moment veils the sun, and I am touched with chill
discouragement; heart and hope fail me, until the golden radiance is
restored.
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