Chapter 78 - Page 2

riseth to the rescue? I see thee
dying:--which of them telleth 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.