She seems to me like a picture which has
fallen from its gilded frame and lies, face downward, on the dusty floor.
The picture never was as needful as a window or a door, but it was
pleasant to see it in its place, and it would be pleasant to see it there
again, and I, for one, should be thankful to have the Lady restored by
some turn of fortune to the position from which she has been so cruelly
cast down.
--I have asked the Landlady about the young man sitting near her, the
same who attracted my attention the other day while I was talking, as I
mentioned. He passes most of his time in a private observatory, it
appears; a watcher of the stars. That I suppose gives the peculiar look
to his lustrous eyes. The Master knows him and was pleased to tell me
something about him.
You call yourself a Poet,--he said,--and we call you so, too, and so you
are; I read your verses and like 'em. But that young man lives in a
world beyond the imagination of poets, let me tell you. The daily home
of his thought is in illimitable space, hovering between the two
eternities. In his contemplations the divisions of time run together, as
in the thought of his Maker. With him also,--I say it not
profanely,--one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one
day.
This account of his occupation increased the interest his look had
excited in me, and I have observed him more particularly and found out
more about him.
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