I can't define what the other life is. It is all around me. I feel it in the water when I swim--a sentiency. If I could only look close enough into the shifting depths, I should see--a hand clasped quickly enough would grasp--what always just evades. I feel it around me, breathing and watching in the woods. It is what I cannot quite catch in the talk of the birds. It is what the animals say with their eyes. The Greeks understood it. They called it Pan, and Cybele, and Dionysus, or dryads in the woods, or nymphs in the fountain, but those were only terms by which they tried to express the inexpressible. It is so subtle--so intoxicating. It is like love--a reblending with all the elements of nature. One aches and strains toward it, and yet feels a delicious, shuddering reluctance to know. January 7. At Time of Death. Oh High Heart of mine, Now list to a wonder! Thou shalt vent thy great rages In lightning and thunder. And the force of thy fury, more mighty than they, Shall rock mountains, and rip them asunder. When thou weepest, oh Heart! All thy bitter deploring In the white whirling rains Shall have anguished outpouring. And the salt and the sound of thy grief, like the sea, Shake the night with its sullen wild roaring. When thou lovest, oh Heart! Into sudden fierce flower, 'Neath thy passionate breath In one rapturous hour, Earth shall blossom, all crimson and trembling with love, Stirred to heart by thy rage and thy power. Then, high Heart, be brave! This death is but rending Of limits that vexed, And the ultimate blending With the cosmical passions of Nature thine own, Made immortal, insatiate, unending. January 10. The Curse of Babel. Boutet de Monvel, who had been lending H---- a polite but obviously fatigued attention, got up with alacrity as the clock struck ten and bowed himself out, with that military bend of the hips characteristic of French salutes. H---- passed his handkerchief around the top of his collar and said: "_Damn_ Babel!" We all laughed.