In a moment he went on:
“If I have insisted on our usefulness, and if I still insist upon it, it is because this consideration alone can recall to us the sympathy which is our due in the world in which we are living. To-day, every one is engrossed by self-interest; but I would like to see this practical society convinced that it is at least as much to its advantage to honor the artist as to honor the manufacturer and the engineer.”
TRANSLATIONS
Page [37]
Ah! proud and traitorous old age!
Why have you so soon brought me low? Why do you hold me so that I cannot strike and with the stroke end my sorrow?
When I think wearily on what I was, of what I am, when I see how changed I am—poor, dried-up, thin—I am enraged! Where is my white forehead—my golden hair—my beautiful shoulders, all in me made for love? This is the end of human beauty! These short arms, these thin hands, these humped shoulders. These breasts—these hips—these limbs—dried and speckled as sausages!
Yet one day you will be like this—like this horrible contamination—thou star of my eyes, thou sun of my nature, oh my angel and my passion! Yes, such will you be, oh Queen of the Graces, after the last sacraments—when you are laid under the grass and the flowers, there to crumble among the bones. Then oh, my beautiful one! tell the worms, when they devour you with kisses, that in spite of them, in spite of all, I have kept the form and the divine essence of my love who has perished.