Their faces touched like the fringes of two clouds, and then withdrew.
They remained very close together, side by side among thousands like
themselves, slowly rising on the same great tide. The Earth's round
body was beneath them. They felt quite safe--but different. Already
they were otherwise than they had been. They felt the big world flying.
"We're changing," he murmured, seizing some fragments of
half-remembered speech. "We're marvellously changed!"
"Daisies," he heard her vanishing reply, "we're two daisies on the
lawn!"
And then their voices went. That was the end of speech, the end of
thinking too. They only felt....
Long periods passed above their heads and then the air about them
turned gorgeous as a sunset sky. It was a Clouded Yellow that sailed
lazily past their faces with spreading wings as large as clouds. They
shared that saffron glory. The draught of cool air fanned them. The
splendid butterfly left its beauty in them before it sailed away. But
that sunset sky had lasted for hours; that cool wind fanning them was a
breeze that blew steadily from the hills, making "weather" for half an
afternoon. Time and duration as humans measure them had passed away;
there was existence without hurry; end and beginning had not been
invented yet. They did not know things in the stupid sense of having
names for them; all that there was they shared; that was enough. They
knew by feeling.
For everything was plentiful and inexhaustible--the heavens emptied
light and warmth upon them without stint or measure; space poured about
them freely, for they had no wish to move; they felt themselves
everywhere, for all they needed came to them without the painful effort
of busy things that hunt and search outside themselves; both food and
drink slipped into them unawares from an abundant source below that
equally supplied whole forests without a trace of lessening or loss.
All life was theirs, full, free, and generous beyond conception. They
owned the world, without even the trouble of knowing that they owned
it. They lived, simply staring at the universe with eyes of exquisitely
fashioned beauty. They knew joy and peace, and were content with that.
They did communicate. Oh, yes, they shared each other's special
happiness. There was, it is true, no sound of broken syllables, no
speech which humans use to veil the very thing they would express; but
there was that simpler language which all Nature knows, which cannot
lie because it is unconscious, and by which constellations converse
with buttercups, and cedars with the flying drops of rain--there was
gesture. For gesture and attitude can convey all the important and
necessary things, while speech in the human sense is but an invention
of some sprite who wanted people to wonder what they really meant. In
sublimest moments it is never used even in the best circles of
intelligence; it drops away quite naturally; souls know one another
face to face in dumb but eloquent--gesture.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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