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— William Blake

Does the Eagle know what is in the pit?

Or wilt thou go ask the Mole:

Can Wisdom be put in a silver rod?

Or Love in a golden bowl?

…

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noun

One who, or that which, accelerates.

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Chapter 316 of 365

Chapter Xviii—the Vulture Become Prey

6 min read

We must insist upon one psychological fact peculiar to barricades.Nothing which is characteristic of that surprising war of the streetsshould be omitted.
Whatever may have been the singular inward tranquillity which we havejust mentioned, the barricade, for those who are inside it, remains,nonetheless, a vision.
There is something of the apocalypse in civil war, all the mists of theunknown are commingled with fierce flashes, revolutions are sphinxes,and any one who has passed through a barricade thinks he has traverseda dream.

The feelings to which one is subject in these places we have pointed out in the case of Marius, and we shall see the consequences; they are both more and less than life. On emerging from a barricade, one no longer knows what one has seen there. One has been terrible, but one knows it not. One has been surrounded with conflicting ideas which had human faces; one’s head has been in the light of the future. There were corpses lying prone there, and phantoms standing erect. The hours were colossal and seemed hours of eternity. One has lived in death. Shadows have passed by. What were they?

Chapter Xviii—the Vulture Become Prey

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