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349
The Journal of a Disappointed Man
·
W. N. P. Barbellion
94
May
29.
Renunciation
Staying
at
the
King's
Hotel,
----.
Giddiness
very
bad.
Death
seems
unavoidable.
A
tumour
on
the
brain?
Coming
down
here
in
the
train,
sat
in
corner
of
the
compartment,
twined
one
leg
around
the
other,
rested
my
elbow
on
the
window
ledge,
and
gazed
out
helplessly
at
the
exuberant
green
fields,
green
woods,
and
green
hedgerows.
The
weather
was
perfect,
the
sun
blazed
down.
Certainly,
I
was
rather
sorry
for
myself
at
the
thought
of
leaving
it
all.
But
I
girded
up
my
loins
and
wrapped
around
me
for
a
while
the
mantle
of
a
nobler
sentiment;
i.e.
I
felt
sorry
for
the
others
as
well--for
the
two
brown
carters
in
the
road
ambling
along
with
a
timber
waggon,
for
the
two
old
maids
in
the
same
compartment
with
me
knitting
bedsocks,
for
the
beautiful
Swallows
darting
over
the
stream,
for
the
rabbit
that
lopped
into
the
fern
just
as
we
passed--they
too
were
all
leaving
it.
The
extent
of
my
benign
compassion
startled
me--it
was
so
unexpected.
Perhaps
for
the
first
time
in
my
life
I
forgot
all
about
my
own
miserable
ambitions--I
forgave
the
successful,
the
time-servers,
the
self-satisfied,
the
overweening,
the
gracious
and
condescending--all,
in
fact,
who
hitherto
have
been
thorns
in
my
flesh
and
innocently
enough
have
goaded
me
to
still
fiercer
efforts
to
win
thro'.
"Poor
people,"
I
said.
"Leave
them
alone.
Let
them
be
happy
if
they
can."
With
a
submissive
heart,
I
was
ready
to
sit
down
in
the
rows
of
this
world's
failures
and
never
have
thought
one
bitter
word
about
success.
To
all
those
persons
who
in
one
way
or
another
had
foiled
my
purposes
I
extended
a
pardon
with
Olympian
gravity,
and,
strangest
of
all,
I
could
have
melted
such
frosty
moral
rectitudes
with
a
genuine
interest
in
the
careers
of
my
struggling
contemporaries.
With
perfect
self-abnegation,
I
held
out
my
hand
to
them
and
wished
them
all
"God
Speed."
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