The Journal of a Disappointed Man

My usual little jaunt up the lane past the mossy farm-house. Home to toasted tea-cakes and a pinewood fire, with my wife chattering prettily to the baby. After tea, enchanted by the reading of a new book--Le Journal de Maurice de Guérin--or rather the introduction to it by Sainte-Beuve. I devoured it! I have spent a devouring day; under a calm exterior I have burnt up the hours; all of me has been athrob; every little cell in my brain has danced to its own little tune. For to-day, Death has been an impossibility. I have felt that anyhow to-day I could not die--I have laughed at the mere thought of it. If only this mood would last! If I could feel thus always, then I could fend off Death for an immortality of life. But suddenly, as now, the real horror of my life and future comes on me in a flash. For a second I am terrified by the menace of the future, but fortunately only for a second. For I've learnt a trick which I fear to reveal; it is so valuable and necessary to me that if I talked of it or vulgarised it my secret might be stolen away. Not a word then! Later. I have just heard on the gramophone, some Grieg, and it has charged my happiness with disrupting voltage of desire. Oh! if only I had health, I could make the welkin ring! I shall leave so little behind me, such a few paltry pages beside what I have it in me to do. It shatters me.