Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/369

Rh tie, it is not my work nor thine. It is no accident that we may avoid, it is only the award of fate that is affecting us. I know of no æons or periods, no life and death, but these meetings and separations. My life is like a stream that is suddenly dammed and has no outlet. But it rises higher up the hills that shut it in, and will become a deep and silent lake. Certainly there is no event comparable for grandeur with the eternal separation, if we may conceive it so, from a being that we have known. I become in a degree sensible of the meaning of finite and infinite. What a grand significance the word &quot;never&quot; acquires! With one with whom we have walked on high ground, we cannot deal on any lower ground ever after. We have tried so many years to put each other to this immortal use, and have failed. Undoubtedly our good genii have mutually found the material unsuitable. We have hitherto paid each other the highest possible compliment, we have recognized each other constantly as divine, have afforded each other that opportunity to live that no other wealth or kindness can afford. And now for some reason inappreciable by us, it has become necessary for us to withhold this mutual aid. Perchance there is none beside who knows us for a god, and none whom we know for such. Each man and woman is a veritable god or