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Thoreau, Henry David, 1817-1862

"A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers"

No doubt he was an insignificant drummer
enough, but his music afforded us a prime and leisure hour, and
we felt that we were in season wholly. These simple sounds
related us to the stars. Ay, there was a logic in them so
convincing that the combined sense of mankind could never make me
doubt their conclusions. I stop my habitual thinking, as if the
plough had suddenly run deeper in its furrow through the crust of
the world. How can I go on, who have just stepped over such a
bottomless skylight in the bog of my life. Suddenly old Time
winked at me,--Ah, you know me, you rogue,--and news had come
that IT was well. That ancient universe is in such capital
health, I think undoubtedly it will never die. Heal yourselves,
doctors; by God, I live.
Then idle Time ran gadding by
And left me with Eternity alone;
I hear beyond the range of sound,
I see beyond the verge of sight,--
I see, smell, taste, hear, feel, that everlasting Something to
which we are allied, at once our maker, our abode, our destiny,
our very Selves; the one historic truth, the most remarkable fact
which can become the distinct and uninvited subject of our
thought, the actual glory of the universe; the only fact which a
human being cannot avoid recognizing, or in some way forget or
dispense with.


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