There are
things there written with such fine and subtile tinctures, paler
than the juice of limes, that to the diurnal eye they leave no
trace, and only the chemistry of night reveals them. Every man's
daylight firmament answers in his mind to the brightness of the
vision in his starriest hour.
These continents and hemispheres are soon run over, but an always
unexplored and infinite region makes off on every side from the
mind, further than to sunset, and we can make no highway or
beaten track into it, but the grass immediately springs up in the
path, for we travel there chiefly with our wings.
Sometimes we see objects as through a thin haze, in their eternal
relations, and they stand like Palenque and the Pyramids, and we
wonder who set them up, and for what purpose. If we see the
reality in things, of what moment is the superficial and apparent
longer? What are the earth and all its interests beside the deep
surmise which pierces and scatters them? While I sit here
listening to the waves which ripple and break on this shore, I am
absolved from all obligation to the past, and the council of
nations may reconsider its votes.
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