“To be happy in gazing: with dead will, free from the grip and greed of selfishness⁠—cold and ashy-grey all over, but with intoxicated moon-eyes!

“That would be the dearest thing to me”⁠—thus doth the seduced one seduce himself⁠—“to love the earth as the moon loveth it, and with the eye only to feel its beauty.

“And this do I call immaculate perception of all things: to want nothing else from them, but to be allowed to lie before them as a mirror with a hundred facets.”⁠—

Oh, ye sentimental dissemblers, ye covetous ones! Ye lack innocence in your desire: and now do ye defame desiring on that account!

Verily, not as creators, as procreators, or as jubilators do ye love the earth!