不时地，他抬起眼睛，透过一扇小窗看到柔和的蓝色星光，月亮从黑色的树木、云彩和金星上方升起，——然后转身写……后面的钟轻轻地嘀嗒作响。的确，我已经很久没有写信了——差不多有两年了，你的信已经发黄了——所以我最初写的这些字显得冷酷而陌生。你还是我认识的那个人吗，还是你变了?当然是改变了——就像我也改变了一样——是彼此亲近，还是更疏远，我们还说不清……我刚刚重读了你的信——不是因为忘记，而是为了快乐——仔细思考你在信中所说的一切——神秘的意识——神圣的皈依——与无限合一的感觉，——对世界的信仰，对它的美丽，对它的目的……好吧，你相信一个人必须有信仰，在某种程度上，如果一个人想在这个黑暗的世界里畅所欲言。但世界真的如此黑暗吗?还是我们自己野蛮的思想，在它里面我们战战兢兢地匆匆走过尚未照亮的街道?这个，我想。 You have been always, let me say, "romantic,"— Eager for color, for beauty, soon discontented With a world of dust and stones and flesh too ailing: Even before the question grew to problem And drove you bickering into metaphysics, You met on lower planes the same great dragon, Seeking release, some fleeting satisfaction, In strange aesthetics . . . You tried, as I remember, One after one, strange cults, and some, too, morbid, The cruder first, more violent sensations, Gorgeously carnal things, conceived and acted With splendid animal thirst . . . Then, by degrees,— Savoring all more delicate gradations In all that hue and tone may play on flesh, Or thought on brain,—you passed, if I may say so, From red and scarlet through morbid greens to mauve. Let us regard ourselves, you used to say, As instruments of music, whereon our lives Will play as we desire: and let us yield These subtle bodies and subtler brains and nerves To all experience plays . . . And so you went From subtle tune to subtler, each heard once, Twice or thrice at the most, tiring of each; And closing one by one your doors, drew in Slowly, through darkening labyrinths of feeling, Towards the central chamber . . . Which now you've reached. What, then's, the secret of this ultimate chamber— Or innermost, rather? If I see it clearly It is the last, and cunningest, resort Of one who has found this world of dust and flesh,— This world of lamentations, death, injustice, Sickness, humiliation, slow defeat, Bareness, and ugliness, and iteration,— Too meaningless; or, if it has a meaning, Too tiresomely insistent on one meaning: Futility . . . This world, I hear you saying,— With lifted chin, and arm in outflung gesture, Coldly imperious,—this transient world, What has it then to give, if not containing Deep hints of nobler worlds? We know its beauties,— Momentary and trivial for the most part, Perceived through flesh, passing like flesh away,— And know how much outweighed they are by darkness. We are like searchers in a house of darkness, A house of dust; we creep with little lanterns, Throwing our tremulous arcs of light at random, Now here, now there, seeing a plane, an angle, An edge, a curve, a wall, a broken stairway Leading to who knows what; but never seeing The whole at once . . . We grope our way a little, And then grow tired. No matter what we touch, Dust is the answer—dust: dust everywhere. If this were all—what were the use, you ask? But this is not: for why should we be seeking, Why should we bring this need to seek for beauty, To lift our minds, if there were only dust? This is the central chamber you have come to: Turning your back to the world, until you came To this deep room, and looked through rose-stained windows, And saw the hues of the world so sweetly changed. Well, in a measure, so only do we all. I am not sure that you can be refuted. At the very last we all put faith in something,— You in this ghost that animates your world, This ethical ghost,—and I, you'll say, in reason,— Or sensuous beauty,—or in my secret self . . . Though as for that you put your faith in these, As much as I do—and then, forsaking reason,— Ascending, you would say, to intuition,— You predicate this ghost of yours, as well. Of course, you might have argued,—and you should have,— That no such deep appearance of design Could shape our world without entailing purpose: For can design exist without a purpose? Without conceiving mind? . . . We are like children W