Monday, September 7, 2026

Diary of Lucy Larcom, December 13, 1861

Vacation is over; and here I am at Norton again, not so fully awake and in earnest about school work as I wish I was.

My whole life has lost the feeling of reality; I cannot tell why. Alike in the city, by the seashore, and here on the levels of this now leafless flat-land, I feel as if I were "moving about in worlds unrealized." I know well enough the theory of life; what principles must sustain me; what great objects there are to live for; and still there remains the same emptiness, the same wonder in everything I do. I feel as I imagine the world might have felt, when going through some of its slow transitions from chaos into habitable earth, waiting for sunshine, and bursting buds, and running rivers. I suppose I am not ready for full life yet.

SOURCE: Daniel Dulany Addison, Lucy Larcom: Life, Letters, and Diary, p. 115

No comments: