Tahiti and Maugham

Tahiti is a lofty green island, with deep folds of a darker green, in which you divine silent valleys; there is mystery in their somber depths, down which murmur and plash cool streams, and you feel that in those umbrageous places life from immemorial times has been led according to immemorial ways. Even here is something sad and terrible. But the impression is fleeting, and serves only to give a greater acuteness to the enjoyment of the moment. It is like the sadness which you may see in the jester's eyes when a merry company is laughing at his sallies; his lips smile and his jokes are gayer because in the communion of laughter he finds himself more intolerably alone. -W Somerset Maugham in The Moon and Six Pence