Oh, dear faint soul, it is hard--hard for us.
We are sick with loneliness.
March 26.
Now and again I have torturing glimpses of a Paradise. And I feel
my soul in its pain every moment of my life. Otherwise, how gladly
would I deny the existence of a soul and a life to come!
For my soul is beset with Nothingness, and the Paradise that shows
itself is not for me.
March 28.
Hatred, after all, is the easiest thing of all to bear.
If you have been forgotten by the one who must have made you, and
if you have been left alone of human beings all your life--all your
nineteen years--then, when at last you see some one looking toward
you with beautiful eyes, and extending to you a beautiful hand, and
showing you a beautiful heart wherein is just a little of beautiful
sympathy for you--for you--oh, that is harder than anything to
bear. Harder than the loneliness and the bitterness--and the tears
are nearer and nearer.
But one would be hurt often, often for the sake of the beautiful
things. Yes, one would gladly be hurt long and often.
I shall never forget how it was with me when I first saw the
beautiful eyes of my dearest anemone lady when they were looking
gently--at me--and the beautiful hand, and the beautiful heart.
The awakening of my racked soul is hardly more heavily laden with
passion and pain. I shall never forget.
Though I feel away from her also, she is the only one out of all
to look gently at me.
Let me writhe and falter with pain; let me go mad--but oh, worldful
of people--for the love of your God--give me out of this seething
darkness only one beautiful human hand to touch mine with _love_,
one beautiful human heart to know the aching sad loneliness of mine,
one beautiful, human soul to mingle with mine in long, long Rest.
Oh, for a human being, my soul wails--a human being to love me!
Oh, to know--just once--what it is to be loved!
Nineteen years without one faint shadow of love is mouldy, crumbling
age--is gray with the dust of centuries.
How long have I lived?
How long must I live?