'
"`I dare say,' I said. `What reason?'
"`Because otherwise,' he said, pointing his pole out at the sky and the abyss,
`we might worship that.'
"`What do you mean?' I demanded.
"`Eternity,' he said in his harsh voice, `the largest of the idols--
the mightiest of the rivals of God.'
"`You mean pantheism and infinity and all that,' I suggested.
"`I mean,' he said with increasing vehemence, `that if there be a house
for me in heaven it will either have a green lamp-post and a hedge,
or something quite as positive and personal as a green lamp-post
and a hedge. I mean that God bade me love one spot and serve it,
and do all things however wild in praise of it, so that this one spot
might be a witness against all the infinities and the sophistries,
that Paradise is somewhere and not anywhere, is something and not anything.
And I would not be so very much surprised if the house in heaven had
a real green lamp-post after all.'
"With which he shouldered his pole and went striding down
the perilous paths below, and left me alone with the eagles.
But since he went a fever of homelessness will often shake me.
I am troubled by rainy meadows and mud cabins that I have
never seen; and I wonder whether America will endure.
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