But the thing is so utterly removed from any sense
of desire or passion that I can hardly describe it. It gives a sense of
long summer days spent in innocent experience, with no need of word or
sign. There is no sense of stirring adventure, of exultation, or pride
about it--it is just an infinite untroubled calm, of beautiful things
perceived in a serenity untroubled by memory or hope, by sorrow or
fear. Its quality lies in its eternity; there is no beginning or end
about it, no opening or closing door. There seems nothing to explain or
reconcile in it; the heart is content to wonder, and has no desire to
understand. There is in it none of the shadow of happy days, past and
gone, embalmed in memory; no breath of the world comes near it, no
thought of care or anxiety, no ugly shadows of death or silence. It
seems when it comes like the only true thing in the world, the only
perfectly pure thing, like light or sweet sound. And yet it has always
the sense that it is not yet quite found, that it is there waiting for
a moment to declare itself, within reach of the hand and yet
unattained. It is so real that it makes me doubt the reality of
everything else in the world, and it removes for an instant all sense
of the jarring and inharmonious elements of life, the pitiful desires,
the angers and coldnesses of fellow-mortals, the selfish claims of
one's own timid heart and mind.
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