I often wander about the fields in the pouring rain, and feeling like a prisoner. What keeps me here? what lures me hence?
I lead the life of a prisoner, confined by walls and iron gratings formed by my own will.
I endure all the pain of exile!
I live in a state of torpor. Why must I wait for death?
It often seems to me as if I were lying at the edge of a precipice, and yet cannot awake and rise.
Whither should I go?
The thought sometimes flashes across the desert waste that fills my soul, and drags me along, like a powerless rider mounted on some enchanted steed: "You know nothing of the world you have left behind you: those who are about you conceal what knowledge they may possess, and you dare not ask."