For when the heart goes before, like a lamp, and illumines the pathway, many things are made clear, that else like hidden in darkness.

Let me essay, O Muse! to follow the wanderer’s footsteps: — Not through each devious path, each changeful year of existence, But as a traveller follows a streamlet’s course through the valley: Far from its margins at times, and seeing the gleam of its water here and there, in some open space, and at intervals only; Then drawing nearer its banks, through sylvan glooms that conceal it, Though he behold it not, he can hear its continuous murmur; Happy, at length, if he find the spot where it reaches an outlet.

Feeling is deep and still; and the word that floats on the surface is as the tossing buoy; that betrays where the anchor is hidden. Therefore trust to thy heart, and to what the world calls illusions.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Evangeline”