DOI article:
Johnson, Lionel Pigot: Tobacco clouds
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27812#0151
By Lionel Johnson
substances introduce me to swarms of men, before unrealised.
And they alt lived and died, and cared for their children, or not,
and led reasonable lives, or not : and, without any alternative, had
casual thoughts and constant passions. Did each one of them
ever stop in his work, and think that the world revolved about
him alone ; and all was his, and for him ? Most men may have
thought so, and shivered a little afterwards ; and worked on
steadily. Or did each one of them ever think that he was always
beset with companions, hordes of men and women, necessary and
inevitable ? Then, he must have struggled a little in his mind, as
a man fights for air, and worked on steadily. It does not do :
this interrogation of mysteries, which are also facts. Nor am I
called upon, from without or from within, to write an Essay upon
the Problem of Economic Distribution. ^r^^zzAzz ^zzzzzzr /
Nature says to me : it is the stir of the world, and the great play
of forces, that I am wailing, to no end. Lefr the great life
continue, and the sun shine upon bright palaces ; and geraniums,
red geraniums, glow at the windows of dingy courts ; death and
sorrow come upon both, and upon me. And on all sides there is
infinite tenderness ; the invincible good-will, which says kind and
cheerful things to every one sometimes, by a friend's mouth ; the
humane pieties of the world, which make glad the CzvAzzr Z)rz,
and make endurable the 7?rjzzzzzzz TiAzzzz'zzz'r. I need not make
myself miserable.
b ull night at last; the dead of night, as dull folk have it;
ignorant persons, who know nothing of nocturnal beauty, of night's
lively magic. It was a good thought, to come out of my lonely
room, to look at the cloisters by moonlight, and to wander round
the Close, under the black shadows of the buttresses, while the
moon is white upon their strange pinnacles. There is no noise,
but only a silence, which seems very old ; old, as the grey monu-
ments
substances introduce me to swarms of men, before unrealised.
And they alt lived and died, and cared for their children, or not,
and led reasonable lives, or not : and, without any alternative, had
casual thoughts and constant passions. Did each one of them
ever stop in his work, and think that the world revolved about
him alone ; and all was his, and for him ? Most men may have
thought so, and shivered a little afterwards ; and worked on
steadily. Or did each one of them ever think that he was always
beset with companions, hordes of men and women, necessary and
inevitable ? Then, he must have struggled a little in his mind, as
a man fights for air, and worked on steadily. It does not do :
this interrogation of mysteries, which are also facts. Nor am I
called upon, from without or from within, to write an Essay upon
the Problem of Economic Distribution. ^r^^zzAzz ^zzzzzzr /
Nature says to me : it is the stir of the world, and the great play
of forces, that I am wailing, to no end. Lefr the great life
continue, and the sun shine upon bright palaces ; and geraniums,
red geraniums, glow at the windows of dingy courts ; death and
sorrow come upon both, and upon me. And on all sides there is
infinite tenderness ; the invincible good-will, which says kind and
cheerful things to every one sometimes, by a friend's mouth ; the
humane pieties of the world, which make glad the CzvAzzr Z)rz,
and make endurable the 7?rjzzzzzzz TiAzzzz'zzz'r. I need not make
myself miserable.
b ull night at last; the dead of night, as dull folk have it;
ignorant persons, who know nothing of nocturnal beauty, of night's
lively magic. It was a good thought, to come out of my lonely
room, to look at the cloisters by moonlight, and to wander round
the Close, under the black shadows of the buttresses, while the
moon is white upon their strange pinnacles. There is no noise,
but only a silence, which seems very old ; old, as the grey monu-
ments