Vast capabilities of joy open round it; it craves for all it presages; desire for more deepening with every attainment.  And then the body intervenes.  Age, sickness, decay, forbid attainment.  Life is inadequate to joy.  What have the gods done?  It cannot be their malice, no, nor carelessness; but—­to let us see oceans of joy, and only give us power to hold a cupful—­is that to live?  It is misery, and the more of joy my artist nature makes me capable of feeling, the deeper my misery.

“But then, O king, thou sayest ’that I leave behind me works that will live; works, too, which paint the joy of life.’  Yes, but to show what the joy of life is, is not to have it.  If I carve the young Phoebus, am I therefore young?  I can write odes of the delight of love, but grown too grey to be beloved, can I have its delight?  That fair slave of yours, and the rower with the muscles all a ripple on his back who lowers the sail in the bay, can write no love odes nor can they paint the joy of love; but they can have it—­not I.”

The knowledge, he thinks, of what joy is, of all that life can give, which increases in the artist as his feebleness increases, makes his fate the deadlier.  What is it to him that his works live?  He does not live.  The hand of death grapples the throat of life at the moment when he sees most clearly its infinite possibilities.  Decay paralyses his hand when he knows best how to use his tools.  It is accomplished wretchedness.

I quote his outburst.  It is in the soul of thousands who have no hope of a life to come.

    “But,” sayest thou—­(and I marvel, I repeat,
    To find thee trip on such a mere word) “what
    Thou writest, paintest, stays; that does not die: 
    Sappho survives, because we sing her songs,
    And AEschylus, because we read his plays!”
    Why, if they live still, let them come and take
    Thy slave in my despite, drink from thy cup,
    Speak in my place!  “Thou diest while I survive?”—­
    Say rather that my fate is deadlier still,
    In this, that every day my sense of joy
    Grows more acute, my soul (intensified
    By power and insight) more enlarged, more keen;
    While every day my hairs fall more and more,
    My hand shakes, and the heavy years increase—­
    The horror quickening still from year to year,
    The consummation coming past escape
    When I shall know most, and yet least enjoy—­
    When all my works wherein I prove my worth,
    Being present still to mock me in men’s mouths,
    Alive still, in the praise of such as thou,
    I, I the feeling, thinking, acting man,
    The man who loved his life so overmuch,
    Sleep in my urn.  It is so horrible
    I dare at times imagine to my need
    Some future state revealed to us by Zeus,
    Unlimited in capability
    For joy, as this is in desire of joy,
    —­To seek which the joy-hunger forces us: