Newcomers to the Ley-borne Life are advis'd not to look up, lest, seiz'd by its proper Vertigo, they fall into the Sky.-- For 't has happen'd more than once, -- drovers and Army officers swear to it, -- as if Gravity along the Visto, is become locally less important than Rapture. (651)The obvious thing to say is that he's meta-speaking his own shift from GR's paranoia to a more capacious sense of wonder & amazement. "Rapture" is also a theological term, & perhaps we see a shift in old Tom's attitude toward things unseen. I also would emphasize the new value of communal experience, the shared "swear[ing]" of the drovers and Army officers who feel and know the new American Visto-world, against the solitude and solipsism of the Zone.
Maybe he's trying to write a sequel to the song that ends GR: "Now everybody--"?
I'll post later about my other favorite episode, St Brenden's Isle (712-13), about which I've recently written in an article about early modern ideas of dolphins and the ocean.
We should also start thinking pretty seriously about your final paper project.
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