Suddenly a storm erupts, a storm within the ox. "How wild its will, how ungovernable its power!" the poet exclaims. The rope strains: who has who by the nose? Right now, there is no question: the Idea has the boy. Look who's on the ground! Look who's getting dragged around! Look who's lost his whip!
What has gone wrong?
Nothing has gone wrong, but much has happened. For at the very moment that the boy "got" the Idea, it changed. It showed itself to be a beast with a mind of its own. A beast with a thousand muscles, an Idea with a thousand implications. Now the boy's mind races. "When one thought moves, another follows, and then another--an endless train," says the poet. The boy tries to write a thousand notes, but he cannot keep up. His world is turning upside down.
"What have I gotten into?" he moans, as his face is rubbed in the mud.
You have no idea, smiles the ox.
"Where did you come from?"
Where did you? (And you, the bee?)
"You're going to kill me!"
You are going to disappear!
Now the boy drifts off. He dreams again of the moment of revelation, of the shaft of light and the song of the lark. But he cannot go back. The poet says he must now commit "the whole energy of his being" to hanging on. I say no. I say to the boy, "Let go of the rope! You can't handle this Idea! It's going to take you where you do not wish to go!"
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