Do not tell
me it is gone then, for I continue so happy that I can hardly get to
sleep again to hunt for more joy. Don't say it is an unreality--for
where does freedom lie? In the body or in the mind? What does it
matter whether my body be lying still or moving from one spot of
space to another? What is the good of motion but to produce the
feeling of freedom? The feeling is everything, and if I have it,
that is all that I want. Bodily motion would indeed disturb it for
me--lay fetters on my spirit.--Sometimes, again, I dream of a new
flower--one never before beheld by mortal eye--with some strange,
wonderful quality in it, perhaps, that makes it a treasure, like
that flower of Milton's invention--haemony--in Comus, you know. But
one curious thing is that that strange quality will never be
recalled in waking hours; so that what it was I can never tell--as
if it belonged to other regions than the life of this world: I
retain only the vaguest memory of its power, and marvel, and
preciousness.--Sometimes it is a little poem or a song I dream of,
or some strange musical instrument, perhaps like one of those I have
seen angels with in a photograph from an old picture. And somehow
with the instrument always comes the knowledge of how to play upon
it.
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