passages: "the great gatsby"

another installment of passages, where i post great excerpts from works of literature guaranteed to please. this time, it's the closing passage of f. scott fitzgerald's the great gatsby:

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 republic 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.

this is probably the most beautiful celebration of the american dream's original promise as well as its inherent ambiguities that has ever been put to paper. yes, i like the usa. so should you, and if fitzgerald can't lure you in, then you're a lost cause...