And continually it transforms its
frustrated hopes into memories, and from these memories it draws fresh
hopes. From the subterranean ore of memory we extract the jewelled
visions of our future; imagination shapes our remembrances into hopes.
And humanity is like a young girl full of longings, hungering for life
and thirsting for love, who weaves her days with dreams, and hopes,
hopes ever, hopes without ceasing, for the eternal and predestined
lover, for him who, because he was destined for her from the beginning,
from before the dawn of her remotest memory, from before her
cradle-days, shall live with her and for her into the illimitable
future, beyond the stretch of her furthest hopes, beyond the grave
itself. And for this poor lovelorn humanity, as for the girl ever
awaiting her lover, there is no kinder wish than that when the winter of
life shall come it may find the sweet dreams of its spring changed into
memories sweeter still, and memories that shall burgeon into new hopes.
In the days when our summer is over, what a flow of calm felicity, of
resignation to destiny, must come from remembering hopes which have
never been realized and which, because they have never been realized,
preserve their pristine purity.
Love hopes, hopes ever and never wearies of hoping; and love of God, our
faith in God, is, above all, hope in Him. For God dies not, and he who
hopes in God shall live for ever.
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