追憶逝水年華

Thus for sixteen days I saw from my window a hundred men at work like busy husbandmen, with teams and horses and apparently all the implements of farming, such a picture as we see on the first page of the almanac; and as often as I looked out I was reminded of the fable of the lark and the reapers, or the parable of the sower, and the like; and now they are all gone, and in thirty days more, probably, I shall look from the same window on the pure sea-green Walden water there, reflecting the clouds and the trees, and sending up its evaporations in solitude, and no traces will appear that a man has ever stood there. Perhaps I shall hear a solitary loon laugh as he dives and plumes himself, or shall see a lonely fisher in his boat, like a floating leaf, beholding his form reflected in the waves, where lately a hundred men securely labored. 

這段充滿詩意的文字立刻讓我想到了《徒然草》中第26段所引的一首和歌：

昔日幽期處牆腳傾廢，

唯見堇花叢生荒草間。

有不待風吹而自散落者，人心之花是也！

從人事的慣例看來，曾經互訴情愛的兩人往往會變成不同世界的人，這比死別更可悲。生長在都市的人，一切變化太快，幾年後回到舊的地方，連可回憶的景物都不見了，更何況是人呢！