* * * * *
The Earth is all on my brain, on my brain, O dark-minded Mother, with
thy passionate cravings after the Infinite, thy regrets, and mighty
griefs, and comatose sleeps, and sinister coming doom, O Earth: and I,
poor man, though a king, sole witness of thy bleak tremendous woes. Upon
her I brood, and do not cease, but brood and brood--the habit, if I
remember right, first becoming fixed and fated during that long voyage
eastward: for what is in store for her God only knows, and I have seen
in my broodings long visions of her future, which, if a man should see
with the eye of flesh, he would spread the arms, and wheel and wheel
through the mazes of a hiccuping giggling frenzy, for the vision only is
the very verge of madness. If I might cease but for one hour that
perpetual brooding upon her! But I am her child, and my mind grows and
grows to her like the off-shoots of the banyan-tree, that take root
downward, and she sucks and draws it, as she draws my feet by
gravitation, and I cannot take wing from her: for she is greater than I,
and there is no escaping her; and at the last, I know, my soul will
dash itself to ruin, like erring sea-fowl upon pharos-lights, against
her wild and mighty bosom.
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