[Zanoni by Edward Bulwer Lytton]@TWC D-Link book
Zanoni

CHAPTER 3
20/31

In the street, in the market-place, in the hovel, it gathers food for the hive of its thoughts.

In the mire of politics, Dante and Milton selected pearls for the wreath of song.
"Who ever told you that Raphael did not enjoy the life without, carrying everywhere with him the one inward idea of beauty which attracted and imbedded in its own amber every straw that the feet of the dull man trampled into mud?
As some lord of the forest wanders abroad for its prey, and scents and follows it over plain and hill, through brake and jungle, but, seizing it at last, bears the quarry to its unwitnessed cave,--so Genius searches through wood and waste, untiringly and eagerly, every sense awake, every nerve strained to speed and strength, for the scattered and flying images of matter, that it seizes at last with its mighty talons, and bears away with it into solitudes no footstep can invade.

Go, seek the world without; it is for art the inexhaustible pasture-ground and harvest to the world within!" "You comfort me," said Glyndon, brightening.

"I had imagined my weariness a proof of my deficiency! But not now would I speak to you of these labours.

Pardon me, if I pass from the toil to the reward.
You have uttered dim prophecies of my future, if I wed one who, in the judgment of the sober world, would only darken its prospects and obstruct its ambition.


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