- end_line
- 6893
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:18.539Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 6831
- text
- men, grew as in hot-beds the nutritious Taro.
Toil is man’s allotment; toil of brain, or toil of hands, or a grief
that’s more than either, the grief and sin of idleness. But when man
toils and slays himself for masters who withhold the life he gives to
them—then, then, the soul screams out, and every sinew cracks. So with
these poor serfs. And few of them could choose but be the brutes they
seemed.
Now needs it to be said, that Odo was no land of pleasure unalloyed,
and plenty without a pause?—Odo, in whose lurking-places infants turned
from breasts, whence flowed no nourishment.—Odo, in whose inmost
haunts, dark groves were brooding, passing which you heard most dismal
cries, and voices cursing Media. There, men were scourged; their crime,
a heresy; the heresy, that Media was no demigod. For this they
shrieked. Their fathers shrieked before; their fathers, who, tormented,
said, “Happy we to groan, that our children’s children may be glad.”
But their children’s children howled. Yet these, too, echoed previous
generations, and loudly swore, “The pit that’s dug for us may prove
another’s grave.”
But let all pass. To look at, and to roam about of holidays, Odo seemed
a happy land. The palm-trees waved—though here and there you marked one
sear and palsy-smitten; the flowers bloomed—though dead ones moldered
in decay; the waves ran up the strand in glee—though, receding, they
sometimes left behind bones mixed with shells.
But else than these, no sign of death was seen throughout the isle. Did
men in Odo live for aye? Was Ponce de Leon’s fountain there? For near
and far, you saw no ranks and files of graves, no generations harvested
in winrows. In Odo, no hard-hearted nabob slept beneath a gentle
epitaph; no requiescat-in-pace mocked a sinner damned; no memento-mori
admonished men to live while yet they might. Here Death hid his skull;
and hid it in the sea, the common sepulcher of Odo. Not dust to dust,
but dust to brine; not hearses but canoes. For all who died upon that
isle were carried out beyond the outer reef, and there were buried with
their sires’ sires. Hence came the thought, that of gusty nights, when
round the isles, and high toward heaven, flew the white reef’s rack and
foam, that then and there, kept chattering watch and ward, the myriads
that were ocean-tombed.
But why these watery obsequies?
Odo was but a little isle, and must the living make way for the dead,
and Life’s small colony be dislodged by Death’s grim hosts; as the
gaunt tribes of Tamerlane o’erspread the tented pastures of the Khan?
And now, what follows, said these Islanders: “Why sow corruption in the
soil which yields us life? We would not pluck our grapes from over
graves. This earth’s an urn for flowers, not for ashes.”
They said that Oro, the supreme, had made a cemetery of the sea.
And what more glorious grave? Was Mausolus more sublimely urned? Or do
the minster-lamps that burn before the tomb of Charlemagne, show more
of pomp, than all the stars, that blaze above the shipwrecked mariner?
But no more of the dead; men shrug their shoulders, and love not their
company; though full soon we shall all have them for fellows.
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- Chunk 2