Before him stood, as a living, suffering reality, what hitherto he had only seen as an effort of imagination, which, in its comparative faintness, yet carried a suspicion, of being exaggerated: a man steeped in poverty and obscurity, weakened by disease, consciously within the shadow of advancing death, but living an intense life in an invisible past and future, careless of his personal lot, except for its possible making some obstruction to a conceived good which he would never share except as a brief inward vision--a day afar off, whose sun would never warm him, but into which he threw his soul's desire, with a passion often wanting to the personal motives of healthy youth. 
Before him stood a man steeped in poverty and obscurity, weakened by disease, under the shadow of advancing death, but living an intense life in an invisible past and future, careless of his personal lot, but throwing his soul's desire into his far-off inward vision with a passion often wanting in the healthy young.
