listened; then shut the window angrily and went off shrugging his
shoulders.

"It's only the plovers flying about the moon," said he. "Five hundred
lines!"

I did my five hundred lines. They taught me that dreaming was illegal
and dangerous, but they neither convinced nor cured me.

I still believe that there are scattered up and down in nature voices
that speak, but which few hear; just as there are millions of flowers
that bloom unseen by man. It is sad for those who catch a hint of it.
Perforce they come back and seek the hidden springs. They waste their
youth and vigor upon empty dreams, and in return for the fleeting
glimpses they have enjoyed, for the perfect phrase half caught and lost
again, will have given up the intercourse of their kind, and even
friendship itself. Yes, it is sad for the schoolboys who open their
windows to gaze at the moon, and never drop the habit! They will find
themselves, all too soon, solitaries in the midst of life, desolate as I
am desolate tonight, beside my dead fire.

No friend will come to knock at my door; not one. I have a few comrades
to whom I give that name. We do not loathe one another. At need they
would help me. But we seldom meet. What should they do here? Dreamers
make no confidences; they shrivel up into themselves and are caught away
on the four winds of heaven. Politics drive them mad; gossip fails to
interest them; the sorrows they create have no remedy save the joys that
they invent; they are natural only when alone, and talk well only to
themselves.