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Most of the big shore places were closed now and there
were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat
across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential
houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old
island here that flowered once for Dutch
sailors' eyes-a fresh, green
breast of the new world. Its vanished
trees, the trees that had
made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last
and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man
must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled
into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face
to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his
capacity for wonder. |
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And as I sat there, brooding on the old unknown world, I thought of
Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of
Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his
dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp
it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back
in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the
republic rolled on under the night. |
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Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by
year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no
matter-tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms father....And
one fine morning- |
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So we beat on, boats against the
current, borne back ceaselessly into
the past. |
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