No reflection was to be allowed now: not one glance was to be cast back; not even one forward.
Not one thought was to be given either to the past or the future.

The first was a page so heavenly sweet--so deadly sad--that to read one line of it would dissolve my courage and break down my energy.

The last was an awful blank: something like the world when the deluge was gone by.
I skirted fields, and hedges, and lanes till after sunrise.

I believe it was a lovely summer morning: I know my shoes, which I had put on when I left the house, were soon wet with dew.

But I looked neither to rising sun, nor smiling sky, nor wakening nature.