What is immortal

To see the golden sun and the azure sky, the outstretched ocean, to walk upon the green earth, and to be a lord of a thousand creatures to look down giddy precipices or over distant flowery vales, to see the world spread out under one's finger in a map, to bring the stars near, to view the smallest insects in a microscope, to read history and witness the revolutions of empires and the succession of generations, to hear the glory of Sidon and Tyre of Babylon and Susa, as of a fade pageant and to say all these were and are now nothing. to think that we exist in such a point of time, and in such a corner of space, to be at once spectators and a part of the moving scene to watch the return of the seasons, of spring and autumn, to hear—

The stock dove plain amid the forest deep,
That drowsy rustles to the sighing gale.

—to traverse desert wildness, to listen to the dungeon's gloom,or sit in crowded theatres and see life itself mocked, to feel heat and cold,pleasure and pain right and wrong,truth and falsehood, to study the works of art and refine the sense of beauty to agony, to worship fame and to dream of immortality, to have read Shakespeare and Beloit to the same species as Sir Isaac Newton to be and to do all this and then in a moment to be nothing to have it all snatched from one like a juggler's ball or a phantasmagoria...

我們看到金色的太陽，蔚藍的天空，廣闊的海洋；我們漫步在綠油油的大地上，做萬物的主人；我們俯視令人目眩心悸的懸崖峭壁，遠眺鮮花盛開的山谷；我們把地圖攤開，任意指點全球；我們把星辰移到眼前觀看，還在顯微鏡下觀察極其微小的生物，我們學歷史，親自目睹帝國的興亡，時代的交替；我們聽人談論西頓、推羅、巴比倫和蘇撒的勛業，如同聽一番往昔的盛會，聽了以后，我們說這些事確實發生過，但現在卻是過眼云煙了；我們思考著自己生活的時代，生活的地區；我們在人生的活動舞臺上既當觀眾，又當演員；我們觀察四季更迭，春秋代序，我們聽見了——

野鴿在濃密的樹林中哀訴，
樹林隨微風的嘆息而低語。

——我們橫越大漠；我們傾聽了子夜的歌聲；我們光顧燈火輝煌的廳堂，走下陰森森的地牢，或者坐在萬頭攢動的劇院里觀看生活本身受到的摩擬；我們親身感受炎熱和寒冷，快樂和痛苦，正義和邪惡，真理和謬誤；我們鉆研藝術作品，把自己的美感提高到極其敏銳的程度；我們崇拜榮譽，夢想不朽；我們閱讀莎士比亞，或者把自己和牛頓爵士視為同一族類，正當我們面臨這一切，從事這一切的時候，自己卻在一剎那之間化為虛無，眼前的一切像是魔術師手中的圓球，像是一場幻影，一下子全都消失得無影無蹤……