If I were to choose a
time for a friend
to make a passing visit to this world for the first time,
in the full possession of all his faculties,
perchance it would be at a moment
when the sun was setting with the splendor in the west,
his light reflected far and wide
through the clarified air after a rain,
and a brilliant rainbow,
as now, o’erarching the eastern sky.
Would he be likely to think this a vulgar place to live,
where one would weary of existence,
and be compelled to devote his life to frivolity
and dissipation?
If a man traveling from world to world
were to pass through this world at such a moment,
would he not be tempted to take up his abode here ?
to make a passing visit to this world for the first time,
in the full possession of all his faculties,
perchance it would be at a moment
when the sun was setting with the splendor in the west,
his light reflected far and wide
through the clarified air after a rain,
and a brilliant rainbow,
as now, o’erarching the eastern sky.
Would he be likely to think this a vulgar place to live,
where one would weary of existence,
and be compelled to devote his life to frivolity
and dissipation?
If a man traveling from world to world
were to pass through this world at such a moment,
would he not be tempted to take up his abode here ?
HDT’s Journal: August 7, 1852
