All life's good was of the spirit, and to give that a clearer shining,
even in one soul, must help the rest. For if its light, shining, as now,
through the grimy horn-lantern of the body, in narrow lanes and along
the miasmatic flats of the world, even so helped men, how much more must
it, rising above that earthly fume, in a hidden corner no longer, but
in the open heaven, a star above the city. Sacrifice! yes, it was just
such a tug as a man in the dark warmth of morning sleep feels it to
leave the pillow. The mountain-tops of morning gleam cold and bare: but
O! when, staff in hand, he is out amid the dew, the larks rising like
fountains above him, the gorse bright as a golden fleece on the
hill-side, and all the world a shining singing vision, what thought of
the lost warmth then? What warmth were not well lost for this keen
exhilarated sense in every nerve, in limb, in eye, in brain? What potion
has sleep like this crystalline air it almost takes one's breath to
drink, of such a maddening chastity is its grot-cool sparkle? What
intoxication can she give us for this larger better rapture? So did
Narcissus, an old Son of the Morning, figure to himself the struggle,
and pronounce 'the world well lost.'
But I feel as I write how little I can give the Reader of all the
'splendid purpose in his eyes' as he made this resolve. Perhaps I am the
less able to do so as--let me confess--I also shared his dream. One
could hardly come near him without, in some measure, doing that at all
times; though with me it could only be a dream, for I was not free.
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