Of stars, eyes, riddles, and hidden magic

"Oh, how incomprehensible everything was, and all sad, although it was so beautiful. Nobody really knew anything. People lived; they ran here and there about the earth and rode through forests; so much seemed to challenge or to promise, and so many sights to stir our longing: an evening star, a blue harebell, a lake half-covered in green reeds, the eyes of beasts and human eyes; and always it was as though something would happen, something never seen and yet sighed for, as though a veil would be pulled back off the world; till the feeling passed, and there had been nothing. The riddle remained unsolved, the hidden magic unrevealed, so that in the end, people grew old, and looked comic like old Father Anselm, or wise like old Abbot Daniel, though perhaps really they knew nothing, still waited, pricking up their ears."

-Hermann Hesse, "Narziss and Goldmund"