midnight
I doubt if ever Columbus suffered such vexation from an itch to be gone . But whither ? Now , it seemed clear to me after long brooding and musing that however beautiful were these regions of which I never wearied to read , and however wild and faithful and strange and lovely the people of the books , somewhere the former must remain yet , somewhere , in immortality serene , dwell they whom so many had spent life in dreaming of , and writing about . In fact , take it for all in all , what could these authors have been at , if they laboured from dawn to midnight , from laborious midnight to dawn , merely to tell of what never was , and never by any chance could be ? It was heaven-clear to me , solitary and a dreamer ; let me but gain the key , I would soon unlock that Eden garden-door . Somewhere yet , I was sure , Imogen 's mountains lift their chill summits into heaven ; over haunted sea-sands Ariel flits ; at his webbed casement next the stars Faust covets youth , till the last trump shall ring him out of dream . It was on a blue March morning , with all the trees of my aunt 's woods in a pale-green tumult of wind , that , quite unwittingly , I set out on a journey that has not yet come to an end .