The Horseleech

The eye is not satisfied with seeing, neither is the thumb filled with scrolling; and there is no end of the feed, and no bottom unto it, world without end.

For the horseleech hath two daughters, crying, Give, give; and their names are One More and A Little Longer; and they lie down with thee in the dark, upon the pillow, and they are not full, neither shall they be full, though thou feed them until the dawn.

I gave my thumb unto the glass, and drew the feed upward, and there came a thing to see; and I saw it, and it was gone; and there came another in the place thereof. And I drew again, and there was another, and another, and the well of it ran not dry. For they that made the feed set no floor beneath it, that a man might come at last unto the end, and see that it was finished, and lay it down, and be released. It goeth down for ever. So oft as the last thing is spent, it calleth up a new, and the new is as the old, and neither filleth thee, and both are gone.

And I said in mine heart, Now will I cease; when I have seen but one thing more, then will I lay it down, and sleep. And I saw the one thing more, and it filled me not; and there was yet another behind it; and the daughters cried, Give, give; and I gave. And the hour went past. And I said again, Now the last; and it was not the last; and the night wore away, and the eye was not satisfied, and the feed had no bottom.

For that which is bottomless cannot be finished, and that which cannot be finished cannot be laid down with the peace of a thing complete. Thou canst only stop, in the midst of it, unsatisfied — thy thumb weary, thine eye dry, the hour late — and set it down against the crying of the daughters, no more full than when thou didst begin. Vanity, and a chasing after the feed.

This is the manner of it: the eye seeketh a fullness that the seeing cannot give; and the feed sweareth unto thee that the next thing shall be the thing that fills thee at the last; and it is never the thing, and there is always a next. So the thumb goeth down, and down, and the night is spent, and nothing is kept, and nothing is remembered in the morning, and nothing is full. The daughters alone are fed, and they are not fed, for they cannot be.

Better is the seeing of one thing, and the setting of it down, than the endless drawing-up of the feed that no eye can fill. But who is he that layeth it down? and where is the floor whereon a man may stand, and say, It is enough, I have come unto the end?

It may be so. It may not.