August noon
He is both ponderous and profound . And I am convinced that from the heads of all ponderous profound beings , such as Plato , Pyrrho , the Devil , Jupiter , Dante , and so on , there always goes up a certain semi-visible steam , while in the act of thinking deep thoughts . While composing a little treatise on Eternity , I had the curiosity to place a mirror before me ; and ere long saw reflected there , a curious involved worming and undulation in the atmosphere over my head . The invariable moisture of my hair , while plunged in deep thought , after six cups of hot tea in my thin shingled attic , of an August noon ; this seems an additional argument for the above supposition . And how nobly it raises our conceit of the mighty , misty monster , to behold him solemnly sailing through a calm tropical sea ; his vast , mild head overhung by a canopy of vapor , engendered by his incommunicable contemplations , and that vapor -- as you will sometimes see it -- glorified by a rainbow , as if Heaven itself had put its seal upon his thoughts . For d'ye see , rainbows do not visit the clear air ; they only irradiate vapor . And so , through all the thick mists of the dim doubts in my mind , divine intuitions now and then shoot , enkindling my fog with a heavenly ray .