The man knows that borderland, and has a contempt for it: he has
long ceased to find antiquity there. It has become a common enough
margin of dreams to him; and he does not attend to its phantasies. He
knows that he has a frolic spirit in his head which has its way at those
hours, but he is not interested in it. It is the inexperienced child who
passes with simplicity through the marginal country; and the thing he
meets there is principally the yet further conception of illimitable
time.
His nurse's lullaby is translated into the mysteries of time. She sings
absolutely immemorial words. It matters little what they may mean to
waking ears; to the ears of a child going to sleep they tell of the
beginning of the world. He has fallen asleep to the sound of them all
his life; and "all his life" means more than older speech can well
express.
Ancient custom is formed in a single spacious year. A child is beset
with long traditions. And his infancy is so old, so old, that the mere
adding of years in the life to follow will not seem to throw it further
back--it is already so far.
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