Around the walls are the stone carvings of the Stations of the Cross.
No one is there. A great quietness rules in this blossoming quadrangle, the sun lies warm on the heavy grey stones, I place my hand upon them and feel the warmth.
At the right-hand corner the green cathedral spire ascends into the pale blue sky of the evening.
Between the glowing columns of the cloister is the cool darkness that only churches have, and I stand there and wonder whether, when I am twenty, I shall have experienced the bewildering emotions of love.
The image is alarmingly near; it touches me before it dissolves in the light of the next star-shell.
I lay hold of my rifle to see that it is in trim.
The barrel is wet, I take it in my hands and rub off the moisture with my fingers.
Between the meadows behind our town there stands a line of old poplars by a stream.
They were visible from a great distance, and although they grew on one bank only, we called them the poplar avenue.
Even as children we had a great love for them, they drew us vaguely thither, we played truant the whole day by them and listened to their rustling.
We sat beneath them on the bank of the stream and let our feet hang in the bright, swift waters.
The pure fragrance of the water and the melody of the wind in the poplars held our fancies.
We loved them dearly, and the image of those days still makes my heart pause in its beating.
It is strange that all the memories that come have these two qualities.
They are always completely calm, that is predominant in them; and even if they are not really calm, they become so.
They are soundless apparitions that speak to me, with looks and gestures silently, without any word —and it is the alarm of their silence that forces me to lay hold of my sleeve and my rifle lest I should abandon myself to the liberation and allurement in which my body would dilate and gently pass away into the still forces that lie behind these things.
They are quiet in this way, because quietness is so unattainable for us now.
At the front there is no quietness and the curse of the front reaches so far that we never pass beyond it.
Even in the remote depots and rest-areas the droning and the muffled noise of shelling is always in our ears.
We are never so far off that it is no more to be heard.
But these last few days it has been unbearable.
Their stillness is the reason why these memories of former times do not awaken desire so much as sorrow—a vast, inapprehensible melancholy.
Once we had such desires—but they return not.
They are past, they belong to another world that is gone from us.
In the barracks they called forth a rebellious, wild craving for their return; for then they were still bound to us, we belonged to them and they to us, even though we were already absent from them.
They appeared in the soldiers' songs which we sang as we marched between the glow of the dawn and the black silhouettes of the forests to drill on the moor, they were a powerful remembrance that was in us and came from us.
But here in the trenches they are completely lost to us.
They arise no more; we are dead and they stand remote on the horizon, they are a mysterious reflection, an apparition, that haunts us, that we fear and love without hope.
They are strong and our desire is strong—but they are unattainable, and we know it.
And even if these scenes of our youth were given back to us we would hardly know what to do.
The tender, secret influence that passed from them into us could not rise again.
We might be amongst them and move in them; we might remember and love them and be stirred by the sight of them.
But it would be like gazing at the photograph of a dead comrade; those are his features, it is his face, and the days we spent together take on a mournful life in the memory; but the man himself it is not.
We could never regain the old intimacy with those scenes.
It was not any recognition of their beauty and their significance that attracted us, but the communion, the feeling of a comradeship with the things and events of our existence, which cut us off and made the world of our parents a thing incomprehensible to us—for then we surrendered ourselves to events and were lost in them, and the least little thing was enough to carry us down the stream of eternity.
Perhaps it was only the privilege of our youth, but as yet we recognized no limits and saw nowhere an end. We had that thrill of expectation in the blood which united us with the course of our days.
To-day we would pass through the scenes of our youth like travellers.
We are burnt up by hard facts; like tradesmen we understand distinctions, and like butchers, necessities.
We are no longer untroubled—we are indifferent.
We might exist there; but should we really live there?
We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men, we are crude and sorrowful and superficial—I believe we are lost.
My hands grow cold and my flesh creeps; and yet the night is warm.
Only the mist is cold, this mysterious mist that trails over the dead and sucks from them their last, creeping life.
By morning they will be pale and green and their blood congealed and black.
Still the parachute-rockets shoot up and cast their pitiless light over the stony landscape, which is full of craters and frozen lights like a moon.
The blood beneath my skin brings fear and restlessness into my thoughts.
They become feeble and tremble, they want warmth and life.
They cannot persist without solace, without illusion, they are disordered before the naked picture of despair.
I hear the rattle of the mess-tins and immediately feel a strong desire for warm food; it would do me good and comfort me.
Painfully I force myself to wait until I am relieved.