Moon -- Fiction; Science fiction, French -- Translations into English; Space flight to the moon -- Fiction
By good luck that place was, as you shall know by and by * * * * * *[1]
that you may very well conclude, that had it not been for that Chance,
if I had had a thousand lives, they had been all lost. I have many
times since reflected upon the vulgar Opinion, That if one precipitate
himself from a very high place, his breath is out before he reach the
ground; and from my adventure I conclude it to be false, or else that
the efficacious Juyce of that Fruit,[2] which squirted into my mouth,
must needs have recalled my soul, that was not far from my Carcass,
which was still hot and in a disposition of exerting the Functions of
Life. The truth is, so soon as I was upon the ground my pain was gone,
before I could think what it was; and the Hunger, which I felt during
my Voyage, was fully satisfied with the sense that I had lost it.[3]
When I was got up, I had hardly taken notice of the largest of Four
great Rivers, which by their conflux make a Lake; when the Spirit, or
invisible Soul, of Plants that breath upon that Country, refreshed my
Brain with a delightful smell: And I found that the Stones there were
neither hard nor rough; but that they carefully softened themselves
when one trode upon them.
[4] I presently lighted upon a Walk with five Avenues, in figure like
to a Star; the Trees whereof seemed to reach up to the Skie, a green
plot of lofty Boughs: Casting up my Eyes from the root to the top, and
then making the same Survey downwards, I was in doubt whether the Earth
carried them, or they the Earth, hanging by their Roots: Their high and
stately Forehead seemed also to bend, as it were by force, under the
weight of the Celestial Globes; and one would say, that their Sighs and
out-stretched Arms, wherewith they embraced the Firmament, demanded of
the Stars the bounty of their purer Influences before they had lost
any thing of their Innocence in the contagious Bed of the Elements.
The Flowers there on all hands, without the aid of any other Gardiner
but Nature, send out so sweet (though wild) a Perfume, that it rouzes
and delights the Smell: There the incarnate of a Rose upon the Bush,
and the lively Azure of a Violet under the Rushes, captivating the
Choice, make each of themselves to be judged the Fairest: There the
whole Year is Spring; there no poysonous Plant sprouts forth, but is
as soon destroyed; there the Brooks by an agreeable murmuring, relate
their Travels to the Pebbles; there Thousands of Quiristers make the
Woods resound with their melodious Notes; and the quavering Clubs of
these divine Musicians are so universal, that every Leaf of the Forest
seems to have borrowed the Tongue and shape of a Nightingale; nay, and
the Nymph _Eccho_ is so delightful[5] with their Airs, that to hear her
repeat, one would say, She were sollicitous to learn them. On the sides
of that Wood are Two Meadows, whose continued Verdure seems an Emerauld
reaching out of sight. The various Colours, which the Spring bestows
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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