Mal du siècle

I lingered long after the office was ended, watching, pondering how in the world one could help a small bird which had flown into the church but could find no way out again. I suspect it will remain there, fluttering round and round distractedly, far up under the arched roof, till it dies exhausted. I seem to have heard of a writer who likened man's life to a bird passing just once only, on some winter night, from window to window, across a cheerfully-lighted hall. The bird, taken captive by the ill-luck of a moment, re-tracing its issueless circle till it expires within the close vaulting of that great stone church:—human life may be like that bird too!

... No area of the past is dead if we are alive to it.

I am wound and knife. I am wind and cheek. I am limb and the rack, and the victim, and the torturer. I am of my own heart the vampire, --one of the great abandoned, condemned to laugh forever and never more to smile.