elves on a
stair; there are stairs below us, which we seem to have ascended; there
are stairs above us, many a one, which go upward and out of sight. But
the Genius which according to the old belief stands at the door by which
we enter, and gives us the lethe to drink, that we may tell no tales,
mixed the cup too strongly, and we cannot shake off the lethargy now at
noonday. Sleep lingers all our lifetime about our eyes, as night hovers
all day in the boughs of the fir-tree. All things swim and glitter. Our
life is not so much threatened as our perception. Ghostlike we glide
through nature, and should not know our place again. Did our birth
fall in some fit of indigence and frugality in nature, that she was so
sparing of her fire and so liberal of her earth that it appears to us
that we lack the affirmative principle, and though we have health and
reason, yet we have no superfluity of spirit for new creation? We have
enough to live and bring the year about, but not an ounce to impart or
to invest. Ah that our Genius were a little more of a genius! We are
like millers on the lower levels of a stream, when the factories above
them have exhausted the water. We too fancy that the upper people must
have raised their dams.

If any of us knew what we were doing, or where we are going, then when
we think we best know! We do not know to-day whether we are busy or
idle. In times when we thought ourselves indolent, we have afterwards
discovered that much was accomplished, and much was begun in us. All our
days are so unprofitable while they pass, that 'tis wonderful where or
when we ever got anything of this which we call wisdom, poetry, virtue.
We never got it on any dated calendar day. Some heavenly days must have
been intercalated somewhere, like those that Hermes won with dice of the
Moon, that Osiris might be born. It is said all martyrdoms looked mean
when they were suffered. Every ship is a romantic object, except that
we sail in. Embark, and the romance quits our vessel and hangs on every
other sail in the horizon. Our life looks trivial, and we shun to
record it. Men seem to have learned of the horizon the art of perpetual
retreating and reference. 'Yonder uplands are rich pasturage, and my
neighbor has fertile meadow, but my field,' says the querulous farmer,
'only holds the world together.' I quote another man's saying; unluckily
that other withdraws himself in the same way, and quotes me. 'Tis
the trick of nature thus