God's harmony is written
All through, in shining bars,
The soul his love has smitten,
As heaven is writ with stars.
The major notes and minor
Are waiting for their wings;
Pray thou the great Diviner
To touch the secret springs.
He may not give expression
In any ocean-tide,
But music, like confession,
Will waft thee to his side;
Where thou, as on a river,
The current deep and strong,
Shalt sail with him forever
Into the land of song."
* * * * *
XXXII.
THOMAS DE QUINCEY.
(BORN 1786--DIED 1859.)
A LIFE OF WONDER AND WARNING.
The "English Opium-eater" himself told publicly, throughout a period of
between thirty and forty years, whatever is known about him to any body;
and in sketching the events of his life, the recorder has little more to
do than to indicate facts which may be found fully expanded in Mr. De
Quincey's "Confessions of an Opium-eater" and "Autobiographic Sketches."
The business which he, in fact, left for others to do is that which, in
spite of obvious impossibility, he was incessantly endeavoring to do
himself--that of analyzing and forming a representation and judgment of
his mind, and of his life as molded by his mind. The most intense
metaphysician of a time remarkable for the predominance of metaphysical
modes of thought, he was as completely unaware, as smaller men of his
mental habits, that in his perpetual self-study and analysis he was
never approaching the truth, for the simple reason that he was not even
within ken of the necessary point of view.
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