THE WAVES 9
some pity, some envy and much good will, take your hand
and bid you good night.
“ Heaven be praised for solitude! Tam alone now. That
almost unknown person has gone, to catch some train, to
take some cab, to go to some place or person whom I do
not know. The face looking at me has gone. The pressure
is removed. Here are empty coffee-cups. Here are chairs
turned but nobody sits on them. Here are empty tables and
nobody any mote coming to dine at them to-night.
“ Let me now raise my song of glory. Heaven be praised
for solitude. Let me be alone. Let me cast and throw away
this veil of being, this cloud that changes with the least
breath, night and day, and all night and all day. While I
sat here I have been changing. Ihave watched the sky change.
I have seen clouds cover the stars, then free the stars, then
cover the stars again. Now I look at their changing no more.
Now no one sees me and I change no more. Heaven be
praised for solitude that has removed the pressure of the
eye. the solicitation of the body, and all need of lies and
phrases.
“ My book, stuffed with phrases, has dropped to the floor.
It lies under the table, to be swept up by the charwoman
when she comes wearily at dawn looking for scraps of paper,
old tram tickets, and here and there a note screwed into a
ball and left with the litter to be swept up. What is the
phrase for the moon? And the phrase for love? By what
name are we to call death? I do not know. I need a little
language such as lovers use, words of one syllable such as
children speak when they come into the room and find their
mother sewing and pick up some scrap of bright wool, a
feather, or a shred of chintz. I need a howl; a cry. When
the storm crosses the marsh and sweeps over me where I
lie in the ditch unregarded I need no words. Nothing neat.
Nothing that comes down with all its feet on the floor.
None of those resonances and lovely echoes that break and
chime from nerve to nerve in our breasts, making wild
music, false phrases. I have done with phrases.
{all