- end_line
- 1845
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:09.927Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 1794
- text
- Like a grand, ground swell, Homer’s old organ rolls its vast volumes
under the light frothy wave-crests of Anacreon and Hafiz; and high over
my ocean, sweet Shakespeare soars, like all the larks of the spring.
Throned on my seaside, like Canute, bearded Ossian smites his hoar
harp, wreathed with wild-flowers, in which warble my Wallers; blind
Milton sings bass to my Petrarchs and Priors, and laureate crown me
with bays.
In me, many worthies recline, and converse. I list to St. Paul who
argues the doubts of Montaigne; Julian the Apostate cross-questions
Augustine; and Thomas-a-Kempis unrolls his old black letters for all to
decipher. Zeno murmurs maxims beneath the hoarse shout of Democritus;
and though Democritus laugh loud and long, and the sneer of Pyrrho be
seen; yet, divine Plato, and Proclus, and, Verulam are of my counsel;
and Zoroaster whispered me before I was born. I walk a world that is
mine; and enter many nations, as Mingo Park rested in African cots; I
am served like Bajazet: Bacchus my butler, Virgil my minstrel, Philip
Sidney my page. My memory is a life beyond birth; my memory, my library
of the Vatican, its alcoves all endless perspectives, eve-tinted by
cross-lights from Middle-Age oriels.
And as the great Mississippi musters his watery nations: Ohio, with all
his leagued streams; Missouri, bringing down in torrents the clans from
the highlands; Arkansas, his Tartar rivers from the plain;—so, with all
the past and present pouring in me, I roll down my billow from afar.
Yet not I, but another: God is my Lord; and though many satellites
revolve around me, I and all mine revolve round the great central
Truth, sun-like, fixed and luminous forever in the foundationless
firmament.
Fire flames on my tongue; and though of old the Bactrian prophets were
stoned, yet the stoners in oblivion sleep. But whoso stones me, shall
be as Erostratus, who put torch to the temple; though Genghis Khan with
Cambyses combine to obliterate him, his name shall be extant in the
mouth of the last man that lives. And if so be, down unto death, whence
I came, will I go, like Xenophon retreating on Greece, all Persia
brandishing her spears in his rear.
My cheek blanches white while I write; I start at the scratch of my
pen; my own mad brood of eagles devours me; fain would I unsay this
audacity; but an iron-mailed hand clenches mine in a vice, and prints
down every letter in my spite. Fain would I hurl off this Dionysius
that rides me; my thoughts crush me down till I groan; in far fields I
hear the song of the reaper, while I slave and faint in this cell. The
fever runs through me like lava; my hot brain burns like a coal; and
like many a monarch, I am less to be envied, than the veriest hind in
the land.
- title
- Chunk 2