Have I not tasted all the pleasures of this petty world—pleasures that would have consumed to ashes a frame less mighty than my own?
I have built temples with the Egyptians, the princes of India, and the Cæsars; I have aided conquerors to vanquish a world; I have reveled through nights of orgiastic fury with rulers of Thebes and Babylon; I have been drunk with wine and blood!
The kingdoms of the earth and all their riches and glory have been mine.
With that lever which Archimedes desired I have uplifted empires and overthrown dynasties. Nay! like a god, I have held the world in the hollow of my hand.
All that the beauty of youth and the love of woman can give to make joyful the hearts of men, have I possessed; no Assyrian king, no Solomon, no ruler of Samarcand, no Caliph of Bagdad, no Rajah of the most eastern East, has ever loved as I; and in my myriad loves I have beheld the realization of all that human thought had conceived or human heart desired or human hand crystallized into that marble of Pentelicus called imperishable—yet less enduring than these iron limbs of mine.
And ruddy I remain like that rosy granite of Egypt on which kings carved their dreams of eternity.
But I am weary of this world!
I have attained all that I sought; I have desired nothing that I have not obtained—save that I now vainly desire and yet shall never obtain.
There is no comrade for me in all this earth; no mind that can comprehend me; no heart that can love me for what I am.
Should I utter what I know, no living creature could understand; should I write my knowledge no human brain could grasp my thought. Wearing the shape of a man, capable of doing all that man can do—yet more perfectly than man can ever do—I must live as these my frail companions, and descend to the level of their feeble minds, and imitate their puny works, though owning the wisdom of a god! How mad were those Greek dreamers who sang of gods descending to the level of humanity that they might love a woman!