composed: a mirror whose surface reflects only the forms of purity and
brightness: a soul within our own soul that describes a circle around
its proper Paradise, which pain and sorrow and evil dare not overleap.
To this we eagerly refer all sensations, thirsting that they should
resemble and correspond with it. The discovery of its antitype; the
meeting with an understanding capable of clearly estimating our own;
an imagination which should enter into and seize upon the subtle
and delicate peculiarities which we have delighted to cherish and
unfold in secret, with a frame, whose nerves, like the chords of two
exquisite lyres, strung to the accompaniment of one delightful voice,
vibrate with the vibrations of our own; and a combination of all these
in such proportion as the type within demands: this is the invisible
and unattainable point to which Love tends; and to attain which, it
urges forth the powers of man to arrest the faintest shadow of that,
without the possession of which, there is no rest or respite to the
heart over which it rules. Hence in solitude, or that deserted state
when we are surrounded by human beings, and yet they sympathize not
with us; we love the flowers, the grass, the waters, and the sky. In
the motion of the very leaves of Spring, in the blue air, there is
then found a secret correspondence with our heart. There is eloquence
in the tongueless wind, and a melody in the flowing brooks and the
rustling of the reeds beside them, which, by their inconceivable
relation to something within the soul, awaken the spirits to dances of
breathless rapture, and bring tears of mysterious tenderness to the
eyes, like the enthusiasm of patriotic success, or the voice of one
beloved singing to you alone. Sterne says that if he were in a desert
he would love some cypress. So soon as this want or power is dead, man
becomes a living sepulchre of himself, and what yet survives is the
mere husk of what once he was.