Part 4 (2/2)

_1802-1803_

”In a half sleep, he dreams of better worlds, And dreaming hears thee still, O singing lark, That singest like an angel in the clouds!”

S. T .C.

[Sidenote: THOUGHTS AND FANCIES]

No one can leap over his own shadow, but poets leap over death.

The old world begins a new year. That is _ours_, but this is from G.o.d.

We may think of time as threefold. Slowly comes the Future, swift the Present pa.s.ses by, but the Past is unmoveable. No impatience will quicken the loiterer, no terror, no delight rein in the flyer, and no regret set in motion the stationary. Wouldst be happy, take the delayer for thy counsellor; do not choose the flyer for thy friend, nor the ever-remainer for thine enemy.

[Sidenote: LIMBO]

Vastum, incultum, solitudo mera, et incrinitissima nuditas.

[_Crinitus_, covered with hair, is to be found in Cicero, _nuditas_ in Quintilian, but _incrinitissima_ is, probably, Coleridgian Latinity.]

[An old man gloating over his past vices may be compared to the] devil at the very end of h.e.l.l, warming himself at the reflection of the fire in the ice.

Dimness of vision, mist, &c., magnify the powers of sight, numbness adds to those of touch. A numb limb seems twice its real size.

Take away from sounds the sense of outness, and what a horrible disease would every minute become! A drive over a pavement would be exquisite torture. What, then, is sympathy if the feelings be not disclosed? An inward reverberation of the stifled cry of distress.

Metaphysics make all one's thoughts equally corrosive on the body, by inducing a habit of making momently and common thought the subject of uncommon interest and intellectual energy.

A kind-hearted man who is obliged to give a refusal or the like which will inflict great pain, finds a relief in doing it roughly and fiercely. Explain this and use it in Christabel.

The unspeakable comfort to a good man's mind, nay, even to a criminal, to be _understood_--to have some one that understands one--and who does not feel that, on earth, no one does? The hope of this, always more or less disappointed, gives the pa.s.sion to friends.h.i.+p.

[Sidenote: October,1802]

Hartley, at Mr. Clarkson's, sent for a candle. The _seems_ made him miserable. ”What do you mean, my love?” ”The seems, the seems. What seems to be and is not, men and faces, and I do not [know] what, ugly, and sometimes pretty, and these turn ugly, and they seem when my eyes are open and worse when they are shut--and the candle cures the _seems_.”

<script>