Essays: First Series by Ralph Waldo Emerson Essay 5 Page 11

for him who has richer company and sweeter conversation in his new thoughts than any old friends, though best and purest, can give him; for the figures, the motions, the words of the beloved object are not like other images written in water, but, as Plutarch said, “enamelled in fire,” and make the study of midnight: —

“Thou art not gone being gone, where’er thou art,

Thou leav’st in him thy watchful eyes, in him thy

loving heart.”

In the noon and the afternoon of life we still throb at the recollection of days when happiness was not happy enough, but must be drugged with the relish of pain and fear; for he touched the secret of the matter who said of love, —