like the deep well in the meadow, where one may see stars at noon—when no stars are shining.
What is Reverie, and what are these Day-dreams, but fleecy cloud-drifts that float eternally, and eternally change shapes, upon the great over-arching sky of thought? You may seize the strong outlines that the passion breezes of to-day shall throw into their figures; but to-morrow may breed a whirlwind that will chase swift, gigantic shadows over the heaven of your thought, and change the whole landscape of your life.
Dream-land will never be exhausted, until we enter the land of dreams; and until, in "shuffling off this mortal coil," thought will become fact, and all facts will be only thought.
As it is, I can conceive no mood of mind more in keeping with what is to follow upon the grave, than those fancies which warp our frail hulks toward the ocean of the Infinite; and that so sublimate the realities of this being, that they seem to belong to that shadowy realm, where every day's journey is leading.
It was warm weather; and my aunt was dozing. "What is this all to be about?" said she, recovering her knitting needle.
"About love, and toil, and duty, and sorrow," said I.
