He delights in analyzing and grasping the thought that informs
the utterance. For a moment, the fine figure, the delicate phrase, make
him jubilant and strong; but the jubilation and the strength soon pass,
for it is not any of the _forms_, even of the thought-forms of truth
that can give rest to his soul.
History attracts him little, for he is not able to discover by its
records the operation of principles yielding hope for his race. Such
there may be, but he does not find them. What hope for the rising wave
that knows in its rise only its doom to sink, and at length be dashed on
the low shore of annihilation?
But the time would fail me to follow the doubling of the soul coursed by
the hounds of Death, or to set down the forms innumerable in which the
golden Haemony springs in its path,
Of sovran use
'Gainst all enchantments, mildew blast, or damp.
And now the shadows are beginning to lengthen towards the night, which,
whether there be a following morn or no, is the night, and spreads out
the wings of darkness. And still as it approaches the more aware grows
the man of a want that differs from any feeling I have already sought to
describe--a sense of insecurity, in no wise the same as the doubt of
life beyond the grave--a need more profound even than that which cries
for a living Nature.
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