A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that
every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret;
that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that
every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there,
is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it!
Something of the awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to
this. No more can I turn the leaves of this dear book that I loved,
and vainly hope in time to read it all. No more can I look into the
depths of this unfathomable water, wherein, as momentary lights
glanced into it, I have had glimpses of buried treasure and other
things submerged. It was appointed that the book should shut with
a spring, for ever and for ever, when I had read but a page. It was
appointed that the water should be locked in an eternal frost, when
the light was playing on its surface, and I stood in ignorance on the
shore. My friend is dead, my neighbour is dead, my love, the darling
of my soul, is dead; it is the inexorable consolidation and
perpetuation of the secret that was always in that individuality,
and which I shall carry in mine to my life's end.
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