Passage 19. What Is Immortal

To see the golden sun and the azure sky, the outstretched ocean,

to walk upon the green earth, and to be lord of a thousand creatures,

to look down giddy precipices or over distant flowery vales,

to see the world spread out under one’s finger in a map,

to bring the stars near, to view the smallest insects in a microscope,

to read history,and witness the revolutions of empires and the succession of generations,

to hear of the glory of Sidon and Tyre, of Babylon and Susa, as of a faded pageant,

and to say all these were, and are now nothing,

to think that we exist in such a point of time,and in such a corner of space,

to be at once spectators and a part of the moving scene,

to watch the return of the seasons, of spring and autumn, to hear —

The stock dove’s notes amid the forest deep,

That drowsy forest rustles to the sighing gale.

— to traverse desert wilderness,to listen to the dungeon's gloom,

or sit in crowded theatres and see life itself mocked,

to feel heat and cold, pleasure and pain, right and wrong, truth and falsehood,

to study the works of art and refine the sense of beauty to agony,

to worship fame and to dream of immortality,

to have read Shakespeare and Beloit to the same species as Sir Isaac Newton;

to be and to do all this, and then in a moment

to be nothing,to have it all snatched from one

like a juggler’ ball or a phantasmagoria...