It was a poetic recreation to watch those distant sails steering for half fabulous ports, whose very names are a mysterious music to our ears. Fayal, and Babel-mandel, ay, and Chagres, and Panama – bound to the famous Bay of San Francisco, and the golden streams of Sacramento and San Joaquin, to Feather River and the American Fork, where Sutter’s Fort presides, and inland stands the City of los Angeles. It is remarkable that men do not sail the sea with more expectation. Nothing remarkable was ever accomplished in a prosaic mood. The heroes and discoverers have found true more than was previously believed, only when they were expecting and dreaming of something more than their contemporaries dreamed of, or even themselves discovered, that is, when they were in a frame of mind fitted to behold the truth. Referred to the world’s standard, they are always insane.
From: Cape Cod….the beach again.
Henry David Thoreau
Despite the folly of expectation during meditation, we also know the wisdom of expecting the best, yearning for That which is beyond the imagination but which we nevertheless locate in the direction of less and less active states of mind. So those explorers and pioneers believed in something more and went the extra yard and there it was, more than we could imagine..
Thank you, Christopher, for these poetic thoughts. I like Thoreau and I’m a bit of a Romantic poet myself. I particularly like where Thoreau says, above, “Nothing remarkable was ever accomplished in a prosaic mood.”
Thankyou Sally Ann. ‘Romantic’ poetry seems to have gone out of fashion – but I am all for it!