Alain-Fournier

... the old Berlin _ last vestige of a mysterious fête _ wheeled away from the gravelled road and went lurching noiselessly across country over a grass-grown track. Beyond the hedge nothing could be seen of it but the driver's cap bobbing up and down.

This evening, which I have tried to spirit away, is a strange burden to me. While time moves on, while the day will soon end and I already wish it gone, there are men who have entrusted all their hopes to it, all their love and their last efforts. There are dying men or others who are waiting for a debt to come due, who wish that tomorrow would never come. There are others for whom the day will break like a pang of remorse; and others who are tired, for whom the night will never be long enough to give them the rest that they need. And I - who have lost my day - what right do I have to wish that tomorrow comes?

Je pensais de meme que notre jeunesse etait finie et le bonheur manqué. I thought too that our youth was over and we had failed to find happiness.

The rain is, in a sense, The sole sad friend of those who find themselvesThinking, wide awake, until the dawn,Who, in bed, alone, with fevered hands, Listen to it, soothed. They like the companyOf its faint moan across the sleeping plain,Its rustling in the garden all night