INTRODUCTORY NOTE
Age crusader. Human life is his topic, and he views it with an Oriental scope of thought, in which distinctions of Time and Space are lost in the wide prospect of Eternity and Immortality. Curiously at variance with this is the play upon words,—a habit which he never outgrew; while his wonderful glances at outward nature, always interpreted symbolically of the spiritual life, indicate how early and intense was that perception of the aspects of the universe which first (and perhaps chiefly still) awakened an interest in Thoreau's pages. Characteristic, too, are his ecstasies concerning Music, of which he was ever the enthusiastic votary. Thus in a passage from some Journal, cited by Ellery Channing in his rich chaos of selections in "Thoreau the Poet-Naturalist," he says: "What a significant comment on our life is the least strain of music! When I hear music I fear no danger; I am invulnerable; I see no foe; I am related to the earliest times and the latest. I hear music below; it washes the dust off my life, and everything I look at. The field of my life becomes a boundless plain, glorious to
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