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1
349
The Journal of a Disappointed Man
·
W. N. P. Barbellion
296
In
any
event,
it
was
an
admirable
ending
from
the
dramatic
point
of
view;
Destiny
is
often
a
superb
dramatist.
What
more
perfect
than
the
death
of
Rupert
Brooke
at
Scyros
in
the
Ægean?[6]
The
lives
of
some
men
are
works
of
art,
perfect
in
form,
in
development
and
in
climax.
Yet
how
frequently
a
life
eminently
successful
or
even
eminently
ruinous
is
also
an
unlovely,
sordid,
ridiculous
or
vulgar
affair!
Every
one
will
concede
that
it
must
be
a
hard
thing
to
be
commonplace
and
vulgar
even
in
misfortune,
to
discover
that
the
tragedy
of
your
own
precious
life
has
been
dramatically
bad,
that
your
life
even
in
its
ruins
is
but
a
poor
thing,
and
your
own
miseries
pathetic
from
their
very
insignificance;
that
you
are
only
Jones
with
chronic
indigestion
rather
than
Guy
de
Maupassant
mad,
or
Coleridge
with
a
great
intellect
being
slowly
dismantled
by
opium.
If
only
I
could
order
my
life
by
line
and
level,
if
I
could
control
or
create
my
own
destiny
and
mould
it
into
some
marble
perfection!
In
short,
if
life
were
an
art
and
not
a
lottery!
In
the
lives
of
all
of
us,
how
many
wasted
efforts,
how
many
wasted
opportunities,
false
starts,
blind--how
many
lost
days--and
man's
life
is
but
a
paltry
three
score
years
and
ten:
pitiful
short
commons
indeed.
Sometimes,
as
I
lean
over
a
five-barred
gate
or
gaze
stupidly
into
the
fire,
I
garner
a
bitter-sweet
contentment
in
making
ideal
reconstructions
of
my
life,
selecting
my
parents,
the
date
and
place
of
my
birth,
my
gifts,
my
education,
my
mentors
and
what
portions
out
of
the
infinity
of
knowledge
shall
gain
a
place
within
my
mind--that
sacred
glebe-land
to
be
zealously
preserved
and
enthusiastically
cultivated.
Whereas,
my
mind
is
now
a
wilderness
in
which
all
kinds
of
useless
growths
have
found
an
ineradicable
foothold.
I
am
exasperated
to
find
I
have
by
heart
the
long
addresses
of
a
lot
of
dismal
business
correspondents
and
yet
can't
remember
the
last
chapters
of
Ecclesiastes:
what
a
waste
of
mind-stuff
there!
It
irks
me
to
be
acquainted
even
to
nausea
with
the
spot
in
which
I
live,
I
whose
feet
have
never
traversed
even
so
much
as
this
little
island
much
less
carried
me
in
triumph
to
Timbuctoo,
Honolulu,
Rio,
Rome.
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