I find "I" am there; an "I" I do not wholly understand, or know--something
is there distinct from earth and timber, from flesh and bones. Recognising
it, I feel on the margin of a life unknown, very near, almost touching it:
on the verge of powers which if I could grasp would give me an immense
breadth of existence, an ability to execute what I now only conceive; most
probably of far more than that. To see that "I" is to know that I am
surrounded with immortal things. If, when I die, that "I" also dies, and
becomes extinct, still even then I have had the
exaltation of these ideas.

How many words it has taken to describe so briefly the feelings
and the thoughts that came to me by the tumulus; thoughts that
swept past and were gone, and were succeeded by others while yet
the shadow of the mound had not moved from one thyme flower to
another, not the breadth of a grass blade. Softly breathed the sweet south
wind, gently the yellow corn waved beneath; the ancient, ancient sun shone
on the fresh grass and the flower, my heart opened wide as the broad, broad
earth. I spread my arms out, laying them on the sward, seizing the grass, to
take the fulness of the days. Could I have my own way after death I would be
burned on a pyre of pine-wood, open to the air, and placed on the summit of
the hills. Then let my ashes be scattered abroad--not collected urn an
urn--freely sown wide and broadcast. That is the natural interment of
man--of man whose Thought at least has been among the immortals; interment
in the elements. Burial is not enough, it does not give sufficient solution
into the elements speedily; a furnace is confined. The high open air of the
topmost hill, there let the tawny flame lick up the fragment called the
body; there cast the ashes into the space it longed for while living. Such
a luxury of interment is only for the wealthy; I fear I shall not be able to
afford it. Else the smoke of my resolution into the elements should
certainly arise in time on the hill-top.