Page:Edgar Allan Poe - how to know him.djvu/354

334 swoop outward from the throne into the starry meadows beyond Orion, where, for pansies and violets, and heart's-ease, are the beds of the triplicate and triple-tinted suns." The Power of Words may well close our brief study of Poe's writings. It contains the philosophy of one who believed that Aidennis the trysting-place not only of dead lovers but of all those homing dreams and far-faring intuitions that feel infinity in their pulses.]

Oinos. Pardon, Agathos, the weakness of a spiritnew-fledged with immortality!

Agathos. You have spoken nothing, my Oinos, for which pardon is to be demanded. Not even here is knowledge a thing of intuition. For wisdom ask of the angels freely, that it may be given!

Oinos. But in this existence, I dreamed that I should be at once cognizant of all things, and thus at once happy in being cognizant of all

Agathos. Ah, not in knowledge is happiness, but in the acquisition of knowledge! In forever knowing, we are forever blessed; but to know all were the curse of a fiend.

Oinos. But does not The Most High know all?

Agathos. That (since he is The Most Happy) must be still the one thing unknown even to.

Oinos. But, since we grow hourly in knowledge, must not at last all things be known?

Agathos. Look down into the abysmal distances!—attempt to force the gaze down the multitudinous vistas of the stars, as we sweep slowly through them thus—and thus—and thus! Even the spiritual vision,is it not at all points arrested by the continuous golden