the soft warm air, the flecks of clouds
dissolving--I used them all for prayer. With all the energy the
sunbeams had poured unwearied on the earth since Sesostris was
conscious of them on the ancient sands; with all the life that
had been lived by vigorous man and beauteous woman since first
in dearest Greece the dream of the gods was woven; with all the
soul-life that had flowed a long stream down to me, I prayed
that I might have a soul more than equal to, far beyond my conception of,
these things of the past, the present, and the fulness of all life. Not
only equal to these, but beyond, higher, and more powerful than I could
imagine. That I might take from all their energy, grandeur, and beauty, and
gather it into me. That my soul might be more than the cosmos of
life.

I prayed with the glowing clouds of sun-set and the soft light of the first
star coming through the violet sky. At night with the stars, according to
the season : now with the Pleiades, now with the Swan or burning Sirius, and
broad Orion's whole
constellation, red Aldebaran, Arcturus, and the Northern Crown;
with the morning star, the lightbringer, once now and then when
I saw it, a white-gold ball in the violet-purple sky, or framed
about with pale summer vapour floating away as red streaks shot
horizontally in the east. A diffused saffron ascended into
the luminous upper azure. The disk of the sun rose over the
hill, fluctuating with throbs of light; his chest heaved in
fervour of brilliance. All the glory of the sunrise filled me with broader
and furnace-like vehemence of prayer. That I might have the deepest of
soul-life, the deepest of all, deeper far than all this greatness of the
visible universe and even of the invisible; that I might have a fulness of
soul till now unknown, and utterly beyond my own conception.