- end_line
- 8487
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:18.539Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 8446
- text
- thee what cheer beyond the grave? But they have gone to the land
unknown. Meet phrase. Where is it? Not one of Oro’s priests telleth a
straight story concerning it; ’twill be hard finding their paradises.
Touching the life of Alma, in Mohi’s chronicles, ’tis related, that a
man was once raised from the tomb. But rubbed he not his eyes, and
stared he not most vacantly? Not one revelation did he make. Ye gods!
to have been a bystander there!
“At best, ’tis but a hope. But will a longing bring the thing desired?
Doth dread avert its object? An instinct is no preservative. The fire I
shrink from, may consume me.—But dead, and yet alive; alive, yet
dead;—thus say the sages of Maramma. But die we then living? Yet if our
dead fathers somewhere and somehow live, why not our unborn sons? For
backward or forward, eternity is the same; already have we been the
nothing we dread to be. Icy thought! But bring it home,—it will not
stay. What ho, hot heart of mine: to beat thus lustily awhile, to feel
in the red rushing blood, and then be ashes,—can this be so? But peace,
peace, thou liar in me, telling me I am immortal—shall I not be as
these bones? To come to this! But the balsam-dropping palms, whose
boles run milk, whose plumes wave boastful in the air, they perish in
their prime, and bow their blasted trunks. Nothing abideth; the river
of yesterday floweth not to-day; the sun’s rising is a setting; living
is dying; the very mountains melt; and all revolve:—systems and
asteroids; the sun wheels through the zodiac, and the zodiac is a
revolution. Ah gods! in all this universal stir, am I to prove one
stable thing?
“Grim chiefs in skeletons, avaunt! Ye are but dust; belike the dust of
beggars; for on this bed, paupers may lie down with kings, and filch
their skulls. This, great Marjora’s arm? No, some old paralytic’s. Ye,
kings? ye, men? Where are your vouchers? I do reject your brother-hood,
ye libelous remains. But no, no; despise them not, oh Babbalanja! Thy
own skeleton, thou thyself dost carry with thee, through this mortal
life; and aye would view it, but for kind nature’s screen; thou art
death alive; and e’en to what’s before thee wilt thou come. Ay, thy
children’s children will walk over thee: thou, voiceless as a calm.”
And over the Coral Kings, Babbalanja paced in profound meditation.
- title
- Chunk 2