Most of the big shore places were closed now and there
were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered

once for Dutch sailors’ eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in

the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder. And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world,
I thought of

Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the
green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long
way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so
close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know
that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast

obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the re-
public rolled on under the night. Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out
our arms

farther.... And one fine morning——

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back
ceaselessly into the past.