)
What is happiness, anyhow? Is this one of its hours, or the like of
it?--so impalpable--a mere breath, an evanescent tinge? I am not
sure--so let me give myself the benefit of the doubt. Hast Thou,
pellucid, in Thy azure depths, medicine for case like mine? (Ah, the
physical shatter and troubled spirit of me the last three years.) And
dost Thou subtly mystically now drip it through the air invisibly upon
me?
_Night of Oct. 28._--The heavens unusually transparent--the stars out
by myriads--the great path of the Milky Way, with its branch, only
seen of very clear nights--Jupiter, setting in the west, looks like a
huge hap-hazard splash, and has a little star for companion.
Clothed in his white garments,
Into the round and clear arena slowly entered the brahmin,
Holding a little child by the hand,
Like the moon with the planet Jupiter in a cloudless night-sky.
_Old Hindu Poem._
_Early in November._--At its farther end the lane already described
opens into a broad grassy upland field of over twenty acres, slightly
sloping to the south. Here I am accustom'd to walk for sky views and
effects, either morning or sundown. To-day from this field my soul
is calm'd and expanded beyond description, the whole forenoon by the
clear blue arching over all, cloudless, nothing particular, only sky
and daylight. Their soothing accompaniments, autumn leaves, the cool
dry air, the faint aroma--crows cawing in the distance--two great
buzzards wheeling gracefully and slowly far up there--the occasional
murmur of the wind, sometimes quite gently, then threatening through
the trees--a gang of farm-laborers loading cornstalks in a field in
sight, and the patient horses waiting.
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