Long, straight folds, like the folds in some heavy silken stuff, passed one after another over the sea from the ship’s prow, and broadening as they passed, and wrinkling and widening, were smoothed out again with a shake, and vanished. The foam flew up, churned by the tediously thudding wheels; white as milk, with a faint hiss it broke up into serpentine eddies, and then melted together again and vanished too, swallowed up by the mist. Persistent and plaintive as the monkey’s whine rang the small bell at the stern. From time to time a porpoise swam up, and with a sudden roll disappeared below the scarcely ruffled surface. And the captain, a silent man with a gloomy, sunburnt face, smoked a short pipe and angrily spat into the dull, stagnant sea. To all my inquiries he responded by a disconnected grumble. I was obliged to turn to my sole companion, the monkey. I sat down beside her; she ceased whining, and again held out her hand to me. The clinging fog oppressed us both with its drowsy dampness; and buried in the same unconscious dreaminess, we sat side by side like brother and sister. I smile now ... but then I had another feeling. We are all children of one mother, and I was glad that the poor little beast was soothed and nestled so confidingly up to me, as to a brother. _November 1879._ N.N. Calmly and gracefully thou movest along the path of life, tearless and smileless, and scarce a heedless glance of indifferent attention ruffles thy calm. Thou art good and wise ... and all things are remote from thee, and of no one hast thou need. Thou art fair, and no one can say, whether thou prizest thy beauty or not. No sympathy hast thou to give; none dost thou desire. Thy glance is deep, and no thought is in it; in that clear depth is emptiness. So in the Elysian field, to the solemn strains of Gluck’s melodies, move without grief or bliss the graceful shades. _November 1879._ STAY! Stay! as I see thee now, abide for ever in my memory! From thy lips the last inspired note has broken. No light, no flash is in thy eyes; they are dim, weighed down by the load of happiness, of the blissful sense of the beauty, it has been thy glad lot to express--the beauty, groping for which thou hast stretched out thy yearning hands, thy triumphant, exhausted hands! What is the radiance--purer and higher than the sun’s radiance--all about thy limbs, the least fold of thy raiment? What god’s caressing breath has set thy scattered tresses floating? His kiss burns on thy brow, white now as marble. This is it, the mystery revealed, the mystery of poesy, of life, of love! This, this is immortality! Other immortality there is none, nor need be. For this instant thou art immortal.