It was a real whale, a photograph of a real whale. I looked into its tiny wise eye and wondered where that eye was now. Was it alive and swimming, or had it died long ago, or was it dying now, right this second? When a whale dies, it falls down through the ocean slowly, over the course of a day. All the other fish see it fall, like a giant statue, like a building, but slowly, slowly.
That great mystery of TIME, were there no other; the illimitable, silent, never-resting thing called Time, rolling, rushing on, swift, silent, like an all-embracing ocean tide, on which we and all the Universe swim like exhalations, like apparitions which are, and then are not: this is forever very literally a miracle; a thing to strike us dumb,-for we have no word to speak about it.
Be not afraid, though every stay Should fail, or be removed away, And thou be stript of all; But lose thyself in that vast sea, The ocean of the Deity, And all they cares shall fall. In death which is the most profound, The purest life is always found; Then, blindly, all forego! He ne're shall find, who will not lose; Who sinks from self, shall gain repose, Which none but he can know.