This Is The Most Enormous Extension Of

[on Common Water.] Its Substance Reaches Everywhere; It Touches The Past And Prepares The Future; It Moves Under The Poles And Wanders Thinly In The Heights Of Air. It Can Assume Forms Of Exquisite Perfection In A Snowflake, Or Strip The Living To A Single Shining Bone Cast Up By The Sea.

Mind Is Locked In Matter Like The Spirit Ariel In A Cloven Pine. Like Ariel, Men Struggle To Escape The Drag Of The Matter They Inhabit, Yet It Is The Spirit That They Fear.

I Was A Shadow Among Shadows Brooding Over The Fate Of Other Shadows That I Alone Strove To Summon Up Out Of The All-pervading Dusk.

Like The Herd Animals We Are, We Sniff Warily At The Strange One Among Us.

Lights Come And Go In The Night Sky. Men, Troubled At Last By The Things They Build, May Toss In Their Sleep And Dream Bad Dreams, Or Lie Awake While The Meteors Whisper Greenly Overhead. But Nowhere In All Space Or On A Thousand Worlds Will There Be Men To Share Our Loneliness.