And as the great Mississippi musters his watery nations: Ohio, with
all his leagued streams; Missouri, bringing down in torrents the clans
from the highlands; Arkansas, his Tartar rivers from the plain;--so,
with all the past and present pouring in me, I roll down my billow
from afar.

Yet not I, but another: God is my Lord; and though many satellites
revolve around me, I and all mine revolve round the great central
Truth, sun-like, fixed and luminous forever in the foundationless
firmament.

Fire flames on my tongue; and though of old the Bactrian prophets were
stoned, yet the stoners in oblivion sleep. But whoso stones me, shall
be as Erostratus, who put torch to the temple; though Genghis Khan
with Cambyses combine to obliterate him, his name shall be extant in
the mouth of the last man that lives. And if so be, down unto death,
whence I came, will I go, like Xenophon retreating on Greece, all
Persia brandishing her spears in his rear.

My cheek blanches white while I write; I start at the scratch of my
pen; my own mad brood of eagles devours me; fain would I unsay this
audacity; but an iron-mailed hand clenches mine in a vice, and prints
down every letter in my spite. Fain would I hurl off this Dionysius
that rides me; my thoughts crush me down till I groan; in far fields I
hear the song of the reaper, while I slave and faint in this cell. The
fever runs through me like lava; my hot brain burns like a coal; and
like many a monarch, I am less to be envied, than the veriest hind in
the land.