Dire Warnings #5

Where do we find ourselves? In a series of which we do not know the extremes and believe that it has none. We wake and find ourselves on a stair; there are stairs below us, which we seem to have ascended; there are stairs above us, many a one, which go upward and out of sight. But the Genius which according to the old belief stands at the door by which we enter and gives us the lethe to drink, that we may tell no tales, mixed the cup too strongly, and we cannot shake off the lethargy now at noonday. Sleep lingers all of our lifetime about our eyes, as night hovers all day in the boughs of the fir tree. All things swim and glitter.

Emerson, "Experience."