Let us
not forget the genial miraculous force we have known to proceed from
a book. We go musing into the vault of day and night; no
constellation shines, no muse descends, the stars are white points,
the roses brick-colored leaves, and frogs pipe, mice cheep, and
wagons creak along the road. We return to the house and take up
Plutarch or Augustine, and read a few sentences or pages, and lo! the
air swarms with life; the front of heaven is full of fiery shapes;
secrets of magnanimity and grandeur invite us on every hand; life is
made up of them. Such is our debt to a book. Observe, moreover,
that we ought to credit literature with much more than the bare word
it gives us. I have just been reading poems which now in my memory
shine with a certain steady, warm, autumnal light. That is not in
their grammatical construction which they give me. If I analyze the
sentences, it eludes me, but is the genius and suggestion of the
whole. Over every true poem lingers a certain wild beauty,
immeasurable; a happiness lightsome and delicious fills the heart and
brain, -- as they say, every man walks environed by his proper
atmosphere, extending to some distance around him.
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