- end_line
- 16500
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:49:30.771Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 16481
- text
- of unchristian Solomon’s wisdom yet. But he who dodges hospitals and
jails, and walks fast crossing graveyards, and would rather talk of
operas than hell; calls Cowper, Young, Pascal, Rousseau, poor devils
all of sick men; and throughout a care-free lifetime swears by Rabelais
as passing wise, and therefore jolly;—not that man is fitted to sit
down on tomb-stones, and break the green damp mould with unfathomably
wondrous Solomon.
But even Solomon, he says, “the man that wandereth out of the way of
understanding shall remain” (_i.e._, even while living) “in the
congregation of the dead.” Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it
invert thee, deaden thee; as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom
that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a
Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest
gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny
spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is
in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle
is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar.
- title
- Chunk 4