"Time is short; the means of life are limited; we have no means answering to our desires.

Now I am wrecked; for the multitudinous images of beauty which filled my mind forbade my seizing upon one which I could have shaped.

I often wished to give one to the world, but the others came round and baffled me; and, moreover, I could not leave the multitude of beauty for the sake of one beauty.

Unless I could embody all I would embody none.
"And, afterwards, when a cry came from man, 'Give one ray even of your hoarded light to us,' and I tried for man's sake to select one, why, then, mists came--old memories of a thousand sweetnesses, a storm of images--till it was impossible to choose; and so I failed, and life is ended.
"But could I live I would do otherwise.

I would give a trifle out of beauty, as an example by which men could guess the rest and love it all; one strain from an angel's song; one flower from the distant land, that men might know that such things were.