Reverie of a Solitary Walker

As evening approached, I came down from the heights of the island, and I liked then to go and sit on the shingle in some secluded spot by the edge of the lake; there the noise of the waves and the movement of the water, taking hold of my senses and driving all other agitation from my soul, would plunge me into a delicious reverie in which night often stole upon me unawares. The ebb and flow of the water, its continuous yet undulating noise, kept lapping against my ears and my eyes, taking the place of all the inward movements which my reverie had calmed within me, and it was enough to make me pleasurably aware of my existence, without troubling myself with thought. From time to time some brief and insubstantial reflection arose concerning the instability of the things of this world, whose image I saw in the surface of the water, but soon these fragile impressions gave way before the unchanging and ceaseless movement which lulled me and without any active effort on my part occupied me so completely that even when time and the habitual signal called me home I could hardly bring myself to go.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Fifth Walk, Reveries of  Solitary Walker

Image: Parc de Saint-Cloud, bassin de la Petite Gerbe, 1904, Eugene Atget

An Overwhelming Brightness

I often stood, it now comes back to me, watching the light fade, experiencing the long drawn out withdrawal of the wood into darkness. But while then, the trees, their twisted limbs and fissured boles, became lost in shadow and night, now, my memory, as if in emulation of a photographic negative, reverses this process, and instead of being absorbed in darkness, in my mind's eye the silhouettes of the trees are gradually obscured by an overwhelming brightness.

Andrei Selyenin: Flashing Water, Silent Earth.

Cures for Melancholy, Part One

Happy he, in that he is freed from the tumults of the world, he seeks no honours, gapes after no preferment, flatters not, envies not, temporizeth not, but lives privately, and well contented with his estate;

      Nec spes corde avidas, nec curam pascit inanem,
      Securus quo fata cadant.

      [He is not troubled with ambition nor vexed with care;
       indifferent to the fate of kingdoms.]

He is not troubled with state matters, whether kingdoms thrive better by succession or election; whether monarchies should be mixed, temperate, or absolute; the house of Ottomon's and Austria is all one to him; he inquires not after colonies or new discoveries; whether Peter were at Rome, or Constantine's donation be of force; what comets or new stars signify, whether the earth stand or move, there be a new world in the moon, or infinite worlds, etc. He is not touched with fear of invasions, factions, or emulations.

Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy