For the town is not a good place."
Then I told him how the town had tempted me, and we compared
experiences. We told of the times when we had come nigh forgetting.
"Just think," said I to him, "I should never have found you had I been
swallowed up in the town."
"And I should never have lain at your feet in the sun," he replied.
"You would never have noticed me in the town."
IV. "HOW THE TOWNSMAN TEMPTED ME"
"Once I was tempted by a townsman," said the wanderer, "but instead of
converting me with his town, he was himself converted by the country.
"For many years I wandered by seashores, asking questions of the sea.
When I came to the sea it was singing its melancholy song, the song
that it has sung from its birth, and it paused neither to hear nor to
answer me. Ever rolling, ever breaking, ever weeping, it continued its
indifferent labour. I walked along its far-stretching sands, leaving
footprints which it immediately effaced. I clambered upon its cliffs
and sat looking out to sea for days, my eyes shining like lighthouse
fires. But the sea revealed not itself to me. Or perhaps it had no
self to reveal. And I could not reveal myself to it; but the sea
expressed itself to me as a picture of my mystery.
"I wandered inland to placid lakes, the looking-glasses of the clouds.
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