of the great wheel. I am not content to pass away "like a
weaver's shuttle." Those metaphors solace me not, nor sweeten the
unpalatable draught of mortality. I care not to be carried with the
tide, that smoothly bears human life to eternity; and reluct at the
inevitable course of destiny. I am in love with this green earth; the
face of town and country; the unspeakable rural solitudes, and the
sweet security of streets. I would set up my tabernacle here. I am
content to stand still at the age to which I am arrived; I, and my
friends: to be no younger, no richer, no handsomer. I do not want to
be weaned by age; or drop, like mellow fruit, as they say, into the
grave.--Any alteration, on this earth of mine, in diet or in lodging,
puzzles and discomposes me. My household-gods plant a terrible fixed
foot, and are not rooted up without blood. They do not willingly seek
Lavinian shores. A new state of being staggers me. Sun, and sky, and
breeze, and solitary walks, and summer holidays, and the greenness of
fields, and the delicious juices of meats and fishes, and society, and
the cheerful glass, and candle-light, and fire-side conversations, and
innocent vanities, and jests, and _irony itself_--do these things go
out with life?

Can a ghost laugh, or shake his gaunt sides, when you are pleasant
with him?

And you, my midnight darlings, my Folios! must I part with the intense
delight of having you (huge armfuls) in my embraces? Must knowledge
come to me, if it come at all, by some awkward experiment of
intuition, and no longer by this familiar process of reading?

Shall I enjoy friendships there, wanting the smiling indications which
point me to them here,--the recognisable face--the "sweet assurance of
a look"--?

In winter this intolerable disinclination to dying--to give it its
mildest name--does more especially haunt and beset me. In a genial
August noon, beneath a sweltering sky, death is almost problematic.
At those times do such poor snakes as myself enjoy an immortality.
Then we expand and burgeon. Then are we as strong again, as valiant
again, as wise again, and a great deal taller. The blast that nips
and shrinks me, puts me in thoughts of death. All things allied to
the insubstantial, wait upon that master feeling; cold, numbness,
dreams, perplexity; moonlight itself, with its shadowy and spectral
appearances,--that cold ghost of the sun, or Phoebus' sickly sister,
like that innutritious one denounced in the C