XXIII.
Feeling his extreme loneliness, yet “breaking into songs by fits” (which proves that In Memoriam was written at intervals),[20] he wanders sometimes to where the cloaked Shadow is sitting—Death,
“Who keeps the keys of all the creeds”—
inasmuch as only when we die shall we know the whole truth; and “falling lame” on his way, that is, stumbling in his vain enquiries as to whence he came and whither he is going, he can only grasp one feeling, which is, that all is miserably changed since they were in company—friends enjoying life together, travelling in foreign lands, and indulging in scholarly communion on classic subjects.
XXIV.
But, after all, was their happiness perfect? No, the very sun, the “fount of Day,” has spots on its surface—“wandering isles of night.” If all had been wholly good and fair, this earth would have remained the Paradise it has never looked, “since Adam left his garden,” as appears in the earlier editions; but now the line runs,
“Since our first sun arose and set.”
Does “the haze of grief” then magnify the past, as things look larger in a fog?[21] Or does his present lowness of spirits set the past in relief, as projections are more apparent when you are beneath them? Or is the past from being far off always in glory, as distance lends enchantment to the view; and so the world becomes orbed
“into the perfect star
We saw not, when we moved therein?”
We are told that, if we were placed in the moon, we should see the Earth as—“the perfect star”—having a shining surface, and being thirteen times larger than the moon itself.