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The separation from the blessedness of childhood, from youth even, has taken the golden glamour from nature, and the future is hopeless emptiness. But what robs nature of its glamour, and life of its joy, is the poison of the retrospective longing, which harks back, in order to sink into its own depths:
Empedocles.
“Thou seekest life—and a godly fire springs to thee,
Gushing and gleaming, from the deeps of the earth;
And, with shuddering longing,
Throws thee down into the flames of Aetna.
“So, through a queen’s wanton whim,
Pearls are dissolved in wine—restrain her not!
Didst thou not throw thy riches, Poet,