So deeply interwoven is the real significance of these words with the
Imagination that, separated from it, they lose all their magical glow
and beauty. Youth moves in no narrow territory; its boundary lines
fade out into infinity. It feels no iron hand of limitation; it
discerns no impassable wall of restriction. Life stretches away before
and about it limitless as space and full of unseen splendours as the
stars that crowd and brighten it. The great wings of hope, unbruised
yet by any beatings of the later tempests, shine through the air,
lustrous and tireless, as if all flights were possible. And far off,
on the remote horizon lines where sight fails, the mirage of dreams
dissolves and reappears in a thousand alluring forms.
Love knows even less of limitation and infirmity. Its eyes, sometimes
oblivious of the things most obvious, pierce the remotest future, read
the innermost soul, discern the last and highest fruitions. The seed
in its hand, hard, black, unbroken, is already a flower to its thought;
out of the bare, stern facts of the present its magical touch brings
one knows not what of joy and loveliness. And when youth and love are
one, the heavens are not bright enough for their thoughts, nor eternity
long enough for their deeds. Amid the shadows of life they seem to
have caught a momentary radiance from beyond the clouds; amid sorrows
and sins and all manner of weariness they are the recurring vision and
revelation of the eternal order.
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