The Dance of Death

(1838)

* * * * *

"Many words for few things!"
"Death ends all; judgment comes to all."

* * * * *

[This work may be called a prose poem. It is impregnated with the
spirit of romanticism, which at the time of writing had a
temporary but powerful hold on the mind of Gustave Flaubert.]

* * * * *

DEATH SPEAKS

At night, in winter, when the snow-flakes fall slowly from heaven
like great white tears, I raise my voice; its resonance thrills
the cypress trees and makes them bud anew.

I pause an instant in my swift course over earth; throw myself
down among cold tombs; and, while dark-plumaged birds rise
suddenly in terror from my side, while the dead slumber
peacefully, while cypress branches droop low o'er my head, while
all around me weeps or lies in deep repose, my burning eyes rest
on the great white clouds, gigantic winding-sheets, unrolling
their slow length across the face of heaven.

How many nights, and years, and ages have I journeyed thus! A
witness of the universal birth and of a like decay; Innumerable
are the generations I have garnered with my scythe. Like God, I am
eternal! The nurse of Earth, I cradle it each night upon a bed
both soft and warm. The same recurring feasts; the same unending
toil! Each morning I depart, each evening I return, bearing within
my mantle's ample folds all that my scythe has gathered. And then
I scatter them to the four winds of Heaven!

* * * * *

When the high billows run, when the heavens weep, and shrieking
winds lash ocean into madness, then in the turmoil and the tumult
do I fling myself upon the surging waves, and lo! the tempest
softly cradles me, as in her hammock sways a queen. The foaming
waters cool my weary feet, burning from bathing in the falling
tears of countless generations that have clung to them in vain
endeavour to arrest my steps.

Then, when the storm has ceased, after its roar has calmed me like
a lullaby, I bow my head: the hurricane, raging in fury but a
moment earlier dies instantly. No longer does it live, but neither
do the men, the ships, the navies that lately sailed upon the
bosom of the waters.

'Mid all that I have seen and known,--peoples and thrones, loves,
glories, sorrows, virtues--what have I ever loved? Nothing--except
the mantling shroud that covers me!

My horse! ah, yes! my horse! I love thee too! How thou rushest
o'er the world! thy hoofs of steel resounding on the heads bruised
by thy speeding feet. Thy tail is straight and crisp, thine eyes
dart flames, the mane upon thy neck flies in the wind, as on we
dash upon our maddened course. Never art thou weary! Never do we
rest! Never do we sleep! Thy