He
becomes pitiful over them, and not willingly breaks their stems, to hurt
the life he more than half believes they share with him. He cannot think
anything created only for him, any more than only for itself. Nature is
no longer a mere contention of forces, whose heaven and whose hell in
one is the dull peace of an equilibrium; but a struggle, through
splendour of colour, graciousness of form, and evasive vitality of
motion and sound, after an utterance hard to find, and never found but
marred by the imperfection of the small and weak that would embody and
set forth the great and mighty. The waving of the tree-tops is the
billowy movement of a hidden delight. The sun lifts his head with intent
to be glorious. No day lasts too long, no night comes too soon: the
twilight is woven of shadowy arms that draw the loving to the bosom of
the Night. In the woman, the infinite after which he thirsts is given
him for his own.
Man's occupation with himself turns his eyes from the great life beyond
his threshold: when love awakes, he forgets himself for a time, and many
a glimpse of strange truth finds its way through his windows, blocked no
longer by the shadow of himself.
Pages:
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80