- end_line
- 11760
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:09.931Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 11691
- text
- As, blindly, we groped back, deep Night dived deeper down in the sea.
“Drop paddles all, and list.”
Holding their breath, over the six gunwales all now leaned; but the
only moans were the wind’s.
Long time we lay thus; then slowly crossed and recrossed our track,
almost hopeless; but yet loth to leave him who, with a song in his
mouth, died and was buried in a breath.
“Let us away,” said Media—“why seek more? He is gone.”
“Ay, gone,” said Babbalanja, “and whither? But a moment since, he was
among us: now, the fixed stars are not more remote than he. So far off,
can he live? Oh, Oro! this death thou ordainest, unmans the manliest.
Say not nay, my lord. Let us not speak behind Death’s back. Hard and
horrible is it to die: blindfold to leap from life’s verge! But thus,
in clouds of dust, and with a trampling as of hoofs, the generations
disappear; death driving them all into his treacherous fold, as wild
Indians the bison herds. Nay, nay, Death is Life’s last despair. Hard
and horrible is it to die. Oro himself, in Alma, died not without a
groan. Yet why, why live? Life is wearisome to all: the same dull
round. Day and night, summer and winter, round about us revolving for
aye. One moment lived, is a life. No new stars appear in the sky; no
new lights in the soul. Yet, of changes there are many. For though,
with rapt sight, in childhood, we behold many strange things beneath
the moon, and all Mardi looks a tented fair— how soon every thing
fades. All of us, in our very bodies, outlive our own selves. I think
of green youth as of a merry playmate departed; and to shake hands, and
be pleasant with my old age, seems in prospect even harder, than to
draw a cold stranger to my bosom. But old age is not for me. I am not
of the stuff that grows old. This Mardi is not our home. Up and down we
wander, like exiles transported to a planet afar:—’tis not the world
_we_ were born in; not the world once so lightsome and gay; not the
world where we once merrily danced, dined, and supped; and wooed, and
wedded our long-buried wives. Then let us depart. But whither? We push
ourselves forward then, start back in affright. Essay it again, and
flee. Hard to live; hard to die; intolerable suspense! But the grim
despot at last interposes; and with a viper in our winding-sheets, we
are dropped in the sea.”
“To me,” said Mohi, his gray locks damp with night-dews, “death’s dark
defile at times seems at hand, with no voice to cheer. That all have
died, makes it not easier for me to depart. And that many have been
quenched in infancy seems a mercy to the slow perishing of my old age,
limb by limb and sense by sense. I have long been the tomb of my youth.
And more has died out of me, already, than remains for the last death
to finish. Babbalanja says truth. In childhood, death stirred me not;
in middle age, it pursued me like a prowling bandit on the road; now,
grown an old man, it boldly leads the way; and ushers me on; and turns
round upon me its skeleton gaze: poisoning the last solaces of life.
Maramma but adds to my gloom.”
“Death! death!” cried Yoomy, “must I be not, and millions be? Must I
go, and the flowers still bloom? Oh, I have marked what it is to be
dead;—how shouting boys, of holidays, hide-and-seek among the tombs,
which must hide all seekers at last.”
“Clouds on clouds!” cried Media, “but away with them all! Why not leap
your graves, while ye may? Time to die, when death comes, without dying
by inches. ’Tis no death, to die; the only death is the fear of it. I,
a demi-god, fear death not.”
“But when the jackals howl round you?” said Babbalanja.
“Drive them off! Die the demi-god’s death! On his last couch of crossed
spears, my brave old sire cried, ‘Wine, wine; strike up, conch and
cymbal; let the king die to martial melodies!’”
- title
- Chunk 2