When I think of all this and write it there is in me a feeling that
is more than pain.
Perhaps the very sweetest, the tenderest, the most pitiful and benign
human voice in the world could sing these things and this feeling
set to their own wondrous music,--and it would echo far--far,--and
you would understand.
February 20.
At times when I walk among the natural things--the barren, natural
things--I know that I believe in Something. Why can I not call it
God and pray to it?
There is Something--I do not know it intellectually, but I feel
it--I _feel_ it--with my soul. It does not seem to reach down to
me. It does not pity me. It does not look at me tenderly in my
unhappiness.
My soul feels only that it is there.
No. It is not all-loving, all-gracious, all-pitying. It hurts
me--it hurts me always as I walk over the sand. But even while it
hurts me it seems to promise--ah, those beautiful things that it
promises me!
And then the hurting is anguish--for I know that the promises will
never be fulfilled.
There is within me a thing that is aching, aching, aching always
as the days pass.
It is not my pain of wanting, nor my pain of unrest, nor my pain of
bitterness, nor of hatred. I know those in all their own anguish.
This aching is another pain. It is a pain that I do not know--that
I feel ignorantly but sharply, and, oh, it is torture, torture!
My soul is worn and weary with pain. There is no compassion--no
mercy upon me. There is no one to help me bear it. It is just I
alone out on the sand and barrenness. It is cruel anguish to be
always alone--and so long--oh, so long!
Nineteen years are as ages to you when you are nineteen.
When you are nineteen there is no experience to tell you that all
things have an end.
This aching pain has no end.
I feel no tears now, but I feel heavy sobs that shake my life to
its center.
My soul is wandering in a wilderness.
There is a great light sometimes that draws my soul toward it. When
my soul turns toward it, it shines out brilliant and dazzling and
awful--and the worn, sensitive thing shrinks away, and shivers,
and is faint.
Shall my soul have to know this Light, inevitably? Must it, some
day, plunge into this?
Oh, it may be--it may be. But I know that I shall die with the pain.
There are times when the great Light is dim and beautiful as the
starlight--the utter agony of it--the cruel, ineffable loveliness!
Do you understand this? I am telling you my young, passionate
life-agony? Do you listen to it indifferently? Has it no meaning
for any one? For me it means everything. For me it makes life old,
long, weariness.
It may be that you know. And perhaps you would even weep a little
with me if you had time.
It is as if this Light were the light of the Christian religion--and
the Christian religion is full of hatred. It says, “Come unto me,
you that are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” But when you
would go, when you reach up with your weary hands, it sends you a
too-brilliant Light--it makes you fair, wondrous promises--it puts
you off. You beseech it in your suffering--
“While the waters near me roll,
While the tempest still is high--”
but it does not listen--it does not care. Worship me, worship me, it
says, but after that let me alone. There is a bookful of promises.
Take it and thank me and worship me.
It does not care.
If I obey it, it looks on indifferently. If I disobey it, it looks
on indifferently. If I am in woe, it looks on indifferently. If I
am in a brief joy, it looks on indifferently.