[The Complete PG Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.]@TWC D-Link book
The Complete PG Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION
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Some, I think,--Wordsworth might be one of them,--spell out a portion of it from certain beautiful natural objects, landscapes, flowers, and others.

I can mention several poems of his that have shadowy hints which seem to me to come near the region where I think it lies.

I have known two persons who pursued it with the passion of the old alchemists,--all wrong evidently, but infatuated, and never giving up the daily search for it until they got tremulous and feeble, and their dreams changed to visions of things that ran and crawled about their floor and ceilings, and so they died.
The vulgar called them drunkards.
I told you that I would let you know the mystery of the effect this young girl's face produces on me.

It is akin to those influences a friend of mine has described, you may remember, as coming from certain voices.

I cannot translate it into words,--only into feelings; and these I have attempted to shadow by showing that her face hinted that revelation of something we are close to knowing, which all imaginative persons are looking for either in this world or on the very threshold of the next.
You shake your head at the vagueness and fanciful incomprehensibleness of my description of the expression in a young girl's face.


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