Relief from progress and striving is a thrilling intoxicant; whether one chooses whiskey or mere illusion, the result is the same. Whenever I think back to my days in Japan I always feel a contrast between the vulgarities of the saké-drinking, idle Japanese, and the loveliness of these happy toilers there in the dark vaults of Nada.
INFERENTIAL
Although I saw before me there the face
Of one whom I had honored among men
The least, and on regarding him again
Would not have had him in another place,
He fitted with an unfamiliar grace
The coffin where I could not see him then
As I had seen him and appraised him when
I deemed him unessential to the race.
For there was more of him than what I saw.
And there was on me more than the old awe
That is the common genius of the dead.
I might as well have heard him: "Never mind;
If some of us were not so far behind,
The rest of us were not so far ahead."
