I wonder if the primal motion of unknown powers, like electricity, for instance, is spiral. Have you ever seen it winding out of a pair of human eyes, knowing that every fresh coil was a spring of the soul, and felt it fixing itself deeper and deeper in your own, until you knew that you were held by it?
Perhaps not. I have: as when Saul turned to me in the cool of that evening, and drew my eyes away, by the power I have spoken of, from the West, where the orange of sunset was fading into twilight.
I have felt it otherwise. A horse was standing, surrounded by snow; the biting winds were cutting across the common, and the blanket with which he had been covered had fallen from him, and lay on the snow. He had turned his head toward the place where it lay, and his eyes were fixed upon it with such power, that, if that blanket had been endowed with one particle of sensation, it would have got up, and folded itself, without a murmur, around the shivering animal. Such a picture as it was! Just then, I would have been Rosa Bonheur; but being as I was, I couldn't be expected to blanket a horse in a crowded street, could I?
We were on the brink of the river. Saul drew my eyes away, and said,—
"You are unhappy, Lucy."
"No," I answered,—"not that."
"That does not content me. May I ask what troubles you?"
I aroused myself to reason. Saul is never satisfied, unless I assign a reason for any mood I am in.
"Saul!" I questioned, "why do the mortals that we call Poets write, and why do non-Poets, like ourselves, sigh over the melancholy days of autumn, and why are we silent and thoughtful every time we think enough of the setting sun to watch its going down?"
"Simply because the winter coming is cold and dreary, in the one case,—and in the other, there are several reasons. Some natures dread the darkness; others have not accomplished the wishes or the work of the day."