On An Unknown Country
Ten years ago, Ed hardyI think, or perhaps a little less or perhaps a little more, I came in the Euston Road - that thoroughfare of Empire - upon a young man a little younger than myself whom I knew, though I did not know him very well. mens jeansIt was drizzling and the second-hand booksellers (who are rare in this thoroughfare) were beginning to put out the waterproof covers over their wares. ed hardy clothingThis disturbed my acquaintance, nike sbbecause he was engaged upon buying a cheap book that should really satisfy him.
Now this was difficult,nba jerseyfor he had no hobby, and the book which should satisfy him must be one that should describe or summon up,women jeans or, it is better to say, hint at - or, the theologians would say, reveal, or the Platonists would say recall - the Unknown Country, new jordanswhich he thought was his very home.
I had know christian louboutinhis habit of seeking such books for two years, and had half wondered at it and half sympathised.supra shoes It was an appetite partly satisfied by almost any work that brought to him the vision of a place in the mind which he had always intensely desired, but to which, as he had then long guessed, and as he is now quite certain, no human paths directly lead. gate valveHe would buy with avidity travels to the moon and to the planets, from the most worthless to the best. mlb jerseyHe loved Utopias and did not disregard even so prosaic a category as books of real travel, wholesale abercrombie fitchso long as by exaggeration or by a glamour in the style they gave him a full draught of that drug which he desired. Whether this satisfaction the young man sought was a satisfaction in illusion true religion(I have used the word "drug" with hesitation), or whether it was, as he persistently maintained, the satisfaction of a memory, ghd hairor whether it was, as I am often tempted to think, the satisfaction of a thirst which will ultimately be quenched in every human soul I cannot tell. Whatever it was, he sought it with more than the appetite with which a hungry man seeks food.Oil painting He sought it with something that was not hunger but passion.
It is well known that men purchase with difficulty second-hand books upon the stalls, and that in some mysterious way the sellers of these books are content to provide a kind of library for the poorer and more eager of the public, and a library admirable in this, Playground equipmentthat it is accessible upon every shelf and exposes a man to no control, except that he must not steal, and even in this it is nothing but the force of public law that interferes. carbon blackMy friend therefore would in the natural course of things have dipped into the book and left it there; china tourbut a better luck persuaded him. Whether it was the beginning of the rain or a sudden loneliness in such terrible weather and in such a terrible town, compelling him to seek a more permanent companionship with another mind,Mechanical seal or whether it was my sudden arrival and shame lest his poverty should appear in his refusing to buy the book - whatever it was, he bought that same. And since he bought the book I also have known it and have found in it, as he did, the most complete expression flow meterthat I know of the Unknown Country, of which he was a citizen - oddly a citizen, as I then thought, wisely as I now conceive.
All that steam pressure reducing valvecan best be expressed in words should be expressed in verse, but verse is a slow thing to create; nay, it is not really created: it is a secretion of the mind, it is a pearl that gathers round some irritant and slowly expresses the very essence of beauty and of desire that has lain long, potential and unexpressed, in the mind of the man who secretes it.Y type strainer God knows that this Unknown Country has been hit off in verse a hundred times. If I were perfectly sure of my accents I would quote two lines from the Odyssey in which the Unknown Country stands out as clear as does a sudden vision from a mountain ridge when the mist lifts after a long climb and one sees beneath one an unexpected and glorious land; such a vision as greets a man when he comes over the Saldeu into the simple and secluded Republic of the Andorrans.Hydraulic fittings Then, again, the Germans in their idioms have flashed it out, I am assured, for I remember a woman telling me that there was a song by Schiller which exactly gave the revelation of which I speak. In English, thank Heaven, emotion of this kind, emotion necessary to the life of the soul, is very abundantly furnished.