'Whom should I love?--Art?--a woman?--what
woman?' Elena seemed far removed from him, lost to him, a
stranger--dead. The others--still further off, dead for evermore.
Therefore he was free. But why renew a pursuit so useless and so
perilous? Why stretch out his hand again towards the tree of knowledge?
'The tree of knowledge has been plucked--all's known!' as Byron said in
Don Juan. What he desired, at the bottom of his heart, was to give
himself freely, gratefully to some higher and purer being. But where to
find that being was the question.
Truly his salvation in the future lay rather in the practice of caution,
prudence, sagacity. His tone of mind seemed to him admirably expressed
in a sonnet of a contemporary poet, whom, from a certain affinity of
literary tastes and similar aesthetic education, he particularly
affected--
'I am as one who lays himself to rest
Under the shadow of a laden tree;
Above his head hangs the ripe fruit, and he
Is weary of drawing bow or arbalest.
He shakes not the fair bough that lowliest
Droops, neither lifts he hand, nor turns to see;
But lies, and gathers to him indolently
The fruits that drop into his very breast.
In that juiced sweetness, over-exquisite,
He bites not deep; he fears the bitterness;
Yet sets it to his lips, that he may smell,
Sucks it with pleasure, not with greediness,
And he is neither grieved nor glad at it.
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