The long-drawn virgin vales; the mild blue hill-sides;
as over these there steals the hush, the hum; you almost swear
that play-wearied children lie sleeping in these solitudes,
in some glad May-time, when the flowers of the woods are plucked.
And all this mixes with your most mystic mood; so that fact and fancy,
half-way meeting, interpenetrate, and form one seamless whole.
Nor did such soothing scenes, however temporary, fail of at least
as temporary an effect on Ahab. But if these secret golden
keys did seem to open in him his own secret golden treasuries,
yet did his breath upon them prove but tarnishing.
Oh, grassy glades! oh ever vernal endless landscapes in the soul;
in ye,--though long parched by the dead drought of the earthly life,--
in ye, men yet may roll, like young horses in new morning clover;
and for some few fleeting moments, feel the cool dew of the life
immortal on them. Would to God these blessed calms would last.
But the mingled, mingling threads of life are woven by warp
and woof: calms crossed by storms, a storm for every calm.
There is no steady unretracing progress in this life; we do not
advance through fixed gradations, and at the last one pause:--
through infancy's unconscious spell, boyhood's thoughtless
faith, adolescence' doubt (the common doom), then scepticism,
then disbelief, resting at last in manhood's pondering repose
of If.
Pages:
771
772
773
774
775
776
777
778
779
780
781
782
783
784
785
786
787
788
789
790
791
792
793
794
795