A Thought of a Friendly Spirit
—a directed meditation
Inspired by "The Island of the Fay", Edgar Allen Poe, 1850
Curated, indited and translated into English as needed.
Nullus enim locus sine genio est.—Servius. ("No place is without a [the] spirit.")
There is a pleasure within our reach—the happiness experienced in the contemplation of natural scenery. In truth, the human who would behold aright the glory of God upon earth must in solitude behold that glory. I love, indeed, to regard the dark valleys, and the gray rocks, and the waters that silently smile, and the forests that sigh, in uneasy slumbers, and the proud watchful mountains that look down upon all,—I love to regard these as the colossal members of one vast animate and sentient whole—a whole whose form is the most perfect and most inclusive of all—the Universe whose thought is that of God; whose enjoyment is knowledge; whose destinies are lost in immensity, whose cognizance of ourselves is akin with our own cognizance.
Solitude
I have strayed and gazed alone. “La solitude est une belle chose; mais il faut quelqu’un pour vous dire que la solitude est une belle chose?” (“Solitude is a beautiful thing; but you need someone to tell you that solitude is a beautiful thing?”)
It was during one of my solitary mental journeys, amid a distant region of my mind where a mountain and a river ran, that I chanced upon an island. I came upon it suddenly in the greenest leafy June. About midway in the short vista, which my dreamy vision took in, a small circular island, profusely verdure, reposed upon the bosom of the stream. I relaxed in thought.
The island was all one radiant glow of garden beauties. It blushed beneath the eyes of the slant sunlight and fairly laughed with flowers. The grass was short, springy, sweet-scented, and lily interspersed. There seemed a deep sense of life and joy about all; everything had motion through the gentle sweepings to and fro of innumerable butterflies. If ever an island was enchanted this, was it. This seemed to be a place of abode for a gentle spirit.
Muse
As I thus mused, with half-shut eyes, while the sun sank rapidly to western rest, and eddying currents careered round and round the island, bearing upon their bosom large, dazzling, white flakes of the bark of the sycamore—flakes which, in their multiform positions upon the water, a quick imagination might have converted into a pattern of anything it pleased.
While I thus mused, it appeared to me that a thought-form of the spirit about whom I had been pondering made its way slowly into the light at the western end of the island. She stood erect in a singularly fragile canoe and urged it with a mere phantom of an oar. While within the influence of the lingering evening sunbeams, her attitude seemed indicative of joy and knowledge as she passed within the shade. Slowly she glided along, and at length rounded the islet and entered the region of light.
At length when the sun had set, she issued thence, darkness fell over all things, and I beheld her magical figure no more. I was calmly pleased and relaxed, appreciating the thoughts I had.
06/08/25