Meaning of “Now is eternity; now is the immortal life.”

The Story of My Heart (1883), Chapter III, Project Gutenberg #2317. The inherited Chapter I note is corrected: ‘It is eternity now’ occurs in Jefferies’s tumulus meditation after he writes that, recognising his inner consciousness / psyche, he cannot understand time. It is speculative spiritual autobiography and metaphysical-poetic reflection, not a scientific theory of time, physics or consciousness.

Counsels and Maxims, T. Bailey Saunders translation, in a discussion of fortune and apparent stability.

Leaves of Grass (1855), untitled first-edition poem later known as “Song of Myself,” printed page 56 (Wikisource scan page 62). The line belongs to the poem’s final movement, later numbered section 52; the 1855 record remains tied to the unnumbered first edition rather than inheriting later section structure.

The Round Table, No. 1, ‘On the Love of Life,’ dated 15 January 1815 in the represented collected text, Project Gutenberg #55932. The sentence opens Hazlitt's argument that attachment to life is driven more by active passions than by present enjoyment and is immediately followed by ‘Without life there can be no action.’ It is philosophical-psychological essay argument, not modern clinical evidence.

Table-Talk, Volume I, Essay III, “On the Past and Future,” Project Gutenberg #3020. “The future is yet to come” occurs in Hazlitt’s comparison of the already-existing past with the not-yet-existing future: the full sentence continues that the future “has never been anything.” The retained short excerpt is therefore part of a philosophical contrast, not a prediction, forecasting rule or scientific proposition.

Poem 690; Dickinson builds the abstract idea of eternity from individual present moments.