"Let us die, beloved, you and I, that we may pass on forever through the
Universal Life! In that deep world of contemplation all fierce desires die
out, and peace comes down. He, Waldo, as he walked there, saw no more the
world that was about him; cried out no more for the thing that he had lost.
His soul rested. Was it only John, think you, who saw the heavens open?
The dreamers see it every day.
Long years before the father had walked in the little cabin, and seen
choirs of angels, and a prince like unto men, but clothed in immortality.
The son's knowledge was not as the father's, therefore the dream was new-
tinted, but the sweetness was all there, the infinite peace that men find
not in the little cankered kingdom of the tangible. The bars of the real
are set close about us; we cannot open our wings but they are struck
against them, and drop bleeding. But, when we glide between the bars into
the great unknown beyond, we may sail forever in the glorious blue, seeing
nothing but our own shadows.
So age succeeds age, and dream succeeds dream, and of the joy of the
dreamer no man knoweth but he who dreameth.
Our fathers had their dream; we have ours; the generation that follows will
have its own. Without dreams and phantoms man cannot exist.
Chapter 2.XIV. Waldo Goes Out to Sit in the Sunshine.
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