"Queen Elizabeth's Day", from Fleet Street Eclogues (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., [1893] 1895) p. 198
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 583.
Fragment No. 16
Variant translations:
We dream of a journey through the universe. But is the universe then not in us? We do not know the depths of our spirit. Inward goes the secret path. Eternity with its worlds, the past and the future, is in us or nowhere.
As translated in "Bildung in Early German Romanticism" by Frederick C. Beiser, in Philosophers on Education : Historical Perspectives (1998) by Amélie Rorty, p. 294
We dream of journeys through the cosmos — Is the cosmos not then in us? We do not know the depths of our own spirit. — The mysterious path leads within. In us, or nowhere, is eternity with its worlds — the past and the future.
Blüthenstaub (1798)
Context: Imagination places the future world for us either above or below or in reincarnation. We dream of travels throughout the universe: is not the universe within us? We do not know the depths of our spirit. The mysterious path leads within. In us, or nowhere, lies eternity with its worlds, the past and the future.
“that which is eternal within the moment only becomes shallow if spread out in time.”
Source: The Home and the World
“somewhere within sight
of the tree of poetry
that is eternity wearing
the green leaves of time.”
"Prayer"
Later Poems (1983)
The Exemplar, The Little Book of Truth
Context: Eternity is life that is beyond time but includes within itself all time but without a before or after. And whoever is taken into the Eternal Nothing possesses all in all and has no 'before or after'. Indeed a person taken within today would not have been there for a shorter period from the point of view of eternity than someone who had been taken Whoever is taken into the Eternal Nothing possesses all in all and has no 'before or after' within a thousand years ago.
Moral, st. 1
The Day-Dream (1842)
Context: So, Lady Flora, take my lay,
And if you find no moral there,
Go, look in any glass and say,
What moral is in being fair.
Oh, to what uses shall we put
The wildweed-flower that simply blows?
And is there any moral shut
Within the bosom of the rose?
Quoted in "Holocaust diarist is played by actress granddaughter", Dalya info Evening Standard, Dri 11 Jan 2013 p. 29
