Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 22 (US).djvu/128

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114
E. T. W. HOFFMANN
E. T. W. HOFFMANN

Freehold in Atlantis; and again be transplanted to my garret, where, enthralled among the pettinesses of necessitous existence, my heart and my sight are so bedimmed with thousand mischiefs, as with thick fog, that the fair Lily will never, never be beheld by me."

Then Archivarius Lindhorst patted me gently on the shoulder, and said: "Soft, soft, my honoured friend! Lament not so! Were you not even now in Atlantis; and have you not at least a pretty little copyhold Farm there, as the poetical possession of your inward sense? And is the blessedness of Anselmus aught else but a Living in Poesy? Can aught else but Poesy reveal itself as the sacred Harmony of all Beings, as the deepest secret of Nature?"