Page:The Campaner thal, and other writings.djvu/356

 quiet of darkness. Thoughts, which day turns into smoke and mist, stand about us in the night as lights and flames: even as the column which fluctuates above the crater of Vesuvius, in the daytime appears a pillar of cloud, but by night a pillar of fire.

THE STARS.

OOK up, and behold the eternal fields of light that lie round about the throne of God. Had no star ever appeared in the heavens, to man there would have been no heavens; and he would have laid himself down to his last sleep, in a spirit of anguish, as upon a gloomy earth vaulted over by a material arch—solid and impervious.

MARTYRDOM.

O die for the truth—is not to die for one's country, but to die for the world. Truth, like the Venus del Medici, will pass down in thirty fragments to posterity: but posterity will collect and recompose them into a goddess. Then also thy temple, eternal Truth! that now stands half below the earth—made hollow by the sepulchres of its witnesses, will raise itself in the total majesty of its proportions; and will stand in monumental granite; and every pillar on which it rests will be fixed in the grave of a martyr.

THE QUARRELS OF FRIENDS.

HY is it that the most fervent love becomes more fervent by brief interruption and reconciliation?