CHAPTER II.
IDYLLIC.

"HAPPY season of Childhood!" exclaims Teufelsdrockh: "Kind Nature, that
art to all a bountiful mother; that visitest the poor man's hut with
auroral radiance; and for thy Nursling hast provided a soft swathing of
Love and infinite Hope, wherein he waxes and slumbers, danced round
(_umgaukelt_) by sweetest Dreams! If the paternal Cottage still shuts us
in, its roof still screens us; with a Father we have as yet a prophet,
priest and king, and an Obedience that makes us free. The young spirit has
awakened out of Eternity, and knows not what we mean by Time; as yet Time
is no fast-hurrying stream, but a sportful sunlit ocean; years to the child
are as ages: ah! the secret of Vicissitude, of that slower or quicker
decay and ceaseless down-rushing of the universal World-fabric, from the
granite mountain to the man or day-moth, is yet unknown; and in a
motionless Universe, we taste, what afterwards in this quick-whirling
Universe is forever denied us, the balm of Rest. Sleep on, thou fair Child,
for thy long rough journey is at hand! A little while, and thou too shalt
sleep no more, but thy very dreams shall be mimic battles; thou too, with
old Arnauld, wilt have to say in stern patience: 'Rest? Rest? Shall I
not have all Eternity to rest in?' Celestial Nepenthe! though a Pyrrhus
conquer empires, and an Alexander sack the world, he finds thee not; and
thou hast once fallen gently, of thy own accord, on the eyelids, on the
heart of every mother's child. For as yet, sleep and waking are one: the
fair Life-garden rustles infinite around, and everywhere is dewy fragrance,
and the budding of Hope; which budding, if in youth, too frost-nipt, it
grow to flowers, will in manhood yield no fruit, but a prickly,
bitter-rinded stone-fruit, of which the fewest can find the kernel."