r that every step of the past is necessary
to know and to remember; nor that, in the shade of the past, the present
stands forth bright; nor that the future is not to be all at once, but
to dawn on us, in zone after zone of quiet progress. I strove to laugh
down all the limits of our life, and then the smallest things broke me
down--me, who tried to realise the impossible on earth. At last I knew
that the power I sought was only God's, and then I prayed to die. All my
life was failure.

"At this crisis I met Aprile, and learned my deep mistake. I had left
love out; and love and knowledge, and power through knowledge, must go
together. And Aprile had also failed, for he had sought love and
rejected knowledge. Life can only move when both are hand in hand:

love preceding
Power, and with much power, always much more love:
Love still too straitened in its present means,
And earnest for new power to set love free.
I learned this, and supposed the whole was learned.

"But to learn it, and to fulfil it, are two different things. I taught
the simple truth, but men would not have it. They sought the complex,
the sensational, the knowledge which amazed them. And for this knowledge
they praised me. I loathed and despised their praise; and when I would
not give them more of the signs and wonders I first gave them, they
avenged themselves by casting shame on my real knowledge. Then I was
tempted, and became the charlatan; and yet despised myself for seeking
man's praise for that which was most contemptible in me. Then I sought
for wild pleasure in the senses, and I hated myself still more. And
hating myself I came to hate men; and then all that Aprile taught to me
was lost.

"But now I know that I did not love enough to trace beneath the hate of
men their love. I did not love enough to see in their follies the grain
of divine wisdom.

To see a good in evil, and a hope
In ill-success; to sympathise, be proud
Of their half-reasons, faint aspirings, dim
Struggles for truth, their poorest fallacies,
Their prejudice and fears and cares and doubts;
All with a touch of nobleness, despite
Their error, upward tending all though weak.

"I did not see this, I did not love enough to see this, and I failed.

"Therefore let men regard me, who rashly longed to know all for power's
sake; and regard Aprile, the poet, who rashly longed for the whole of
love for beauty's sake--and