ord? laugh away!"
"No, thank you, Azzageddi, not after that infernal fashion; better
weep."
"He makes me crawl all over, as if I were an ant-hill," said Mohi.
"He's mad, mad, mad!" cried Yoomy.
"Ay, mad, mad, mad!--mad as the mad fiend that rides me!--But come,
sweet minstrel, wilt list to a song?--We madmen are all poets, you
know:--Ha! ha!--
Stars laugh in the sky:
Oh fugle-fi I
The waves dimple below:
Oh fugle-fo!
"The wind strikes her dulcimers; the groves give a shout; the
hurricane is only an hysterical laugh; and the lightning that blasts,
blasts only in play. We must laugh or we die; to laugh is to live. Not
to laugh is to have the tetanus. Will you weep? then laugh while you
weep. For mirth and sorrow are kin; are published by identical nerves.
Go, Yoomy: go study anatomy: there is much to be learned from the
dead, more than you may learn from the living and I am dead though I
live; and as soon dissect myself as another; I curiously look into my
secrets: and grope under my ribs. I have found that the heart is not
whole, but divided; that it seeks a soft cushion whereon to repose;
that it vitalizes the blood; which else were weaker than water: I have
found that we can not live without hearts; though the heartless live
longest. Yet hug your hearts, ye handful that have them; 'tis a
blessed inheritance! Thus, thus, my lord, I run on; from one pole to
the other; from this thing to that. But so the great world goes round,
and in one Somerset, shows the sun twenty-five thousand miles of a
landscape!"
At that instant, down went the fiery full-moon, and the Dog-Star; and
far down into Media, a Tivoli of wine.
CHAPTER LXXX
Morning
Life or death, weal or woe, the sun stays not his course. On: over
battle-field and bower; over tower, and town, he speeds,--peers in at
births, and death-beds; lights up cathedral, mosque, and pagan
shrine;--laughing over all;--a very Democritus in the sky; and in one
brief day sees more than any pilgrim in a century's round.
So, the sun; nearer heaven than we:--with what mind, then, may blessed
Oro downward look.
It was a purple, red, and yellow East;--streaked, and crossed. And
down from breezy mountains, robust and ruddy Morning came,--a plaided
Highlander, waving his plumed bonnet to the isles.
Over the neighboring groves the larks soared high; and soaring, sang
in jubilees; while across our bows, between two isles, a mighty moose
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