midnight
Young visionaries -- to whom just so much of insight had been imparted as to make life all a labyrinth around them -- came to seek the clew that should guide them out of their self-involved bewilderment . Gray-headed theorists -- whose systems , at first air , had finally imprisoned them in an iron framework -- travelled painfully to his door , not to ask deliverance , but to invite the free spirit into their own thraldom . People that had lighted on a new thought or a thought that they fancied new , came to Emerson , as the finder of a glittering gem hastens to a lapidary , to ascertain its quality and value . Uncertain , troubled , earnest wanderers through the midnight of the moral world beheld his intellectual fire as a beacon burning on a hill-top , and , climbing the difficult ascent , looked forth into the surrounding obscurity more hopefully than hitherto . The light revealed objects unseen before , -- mountains , gleaming lakes , glimpses of a creation among the chaos ; but also , as was unavoidable , it attracted bats and owls and the whole host of night birds , which flapped their dusky wings against the gazer 's eyes , and sometimes were mistaken for fowls of angelic feather . Such delusions always hover nigh whenever a beacon-fire of truth is kindled . For myself , there bad been epochs of my life when I , too , might have asked of this prophet the master word that should solve me the riddle of the universe ; but now , being happy , I felt as if there were no question to be put , and therefore admired Emerson as a poet , of deep beauty and austere tenderness , but sought nothing from him as a philosopher .