"Verba scripta manent" takes on a majestic
significance. Are not joy and sadness the same? The only difference is
one of rapidity. Sadness is made up of the long, slow, majestic chords
of the song. It seems to me that when a wheel seems to cease motion,
and finally attains a state of motionlessness, it is perhaps merely
turning into a terrible speed which we cannot perceive. It is the
turning of an hour-glass. When I am dead, I wish only my faults to be
chronicled, for these alone have any value for the world. I have
dreamt always of cycles of infinities. As a decimal always tends by
evolution towards a number, so also we evolve toward an infinity. Yet
at that goal another infinity starts, as another infinity starts in
numbers,--the symbol of patience after all.
"Unto the man of yearning thought
And aspiration, to do nought
Is in itself almost an act,--
Being chasm-fire and cataract
Of the soul's utter depths unseal'd.
Yet woe to thee if once thou yield
Unto the act of doing nought!"
Read Hello and Elia. I am learning how to see in crowds. These past
few days I have succeeded in withdrawing into life for long periods in
the midst of a general conversation, yet my absence was not noted in
the least. Out of it I hope will develop the ability to be with life
always in the tangle and confusion of city circumstance. This
afternoon I read _Phaedrus_ aloud on a sunny cliff, and in the evening
read aloud Keats' "I stood tiptoe" on the green heights in the wind
and the rain.
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