I do not forget you: I see you quite plainly.

* * * * *

Tangles of social claims, convenances, toy-duties, fine soft-carpeted house, array of servants, failing and failing health, growing and settled sadness, ennui, wearisome pleasures, hyper-sensitiveness.

Golden hand-cuffs, the prison life of Custom without one touch of nature, desperate beating of wings and breast against the bars, trailing slime and winding web of lies impossible to escape from.

Careful obediences; sleek hat and well-brushed coat; blameless deference to public opinion; the desk, the counter, the Exchange, the walk home, the favorable comments of passers-by;

And within, blinding burning hatred, bottomless yawning pits opening in the midst of life—of love, of jealousy, of desire—vast gales and whirlwinds carrying away the superstructure and the plans of years.

Waves and storms of the ocean within; shipwreck and disaster of life; fortune, health, honor, love, gone down seeming irretrievably in the great signless waste; and still the stars shining calm on the flying spray, and the immense placid heaven unmoved going back to innumerable other worlds and radiant birth-places and pilgrimages and possessions of the Soul without end.