Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/219

 MT. 30.] TO HARRISON BLAKE. 195

a vision ; but that faint glimmer of reality which sometimes illuminates the darkness of daylight for all men, reveals something more solid and enduring than adamant, which is in fact the cor ner-stone of the world.

Men cannot conceive of a state of things so fair that it cannot be realized. Can any man honestly consult his experience and say that it is so ? Have we any facts to appeal to when we say that our dreams are premature ? Did you ever hear of a man who had striven all his life faithfully and singly toward an object and in no measure obtained it? If a man constantly as pires, is he not elevated ? Did ever a man try heroism, magnanimity, truth, sincerity, and find that there was no advantage in them? that it was a vain endeavor ? Of course we do not ex pect that our paradise will be a garden. We know not what we ask. To look at literature ; how many fine thoughts has every man had ! how few fine thoughts are expressed ! Yet we never have a fantasy so subtile and ethereal, but that talent merely, with more resolution and faithful persistency, after a thousand failures, might fix and engrave it in distinct and endur ing words, and we should see that our dreams are the solidest facts that we know. But I speak not of dreams.

What can be expressed in words can be ex pressed in life.