In certain valleys there was a hunter. Day by day he went to hunt for
wild-fowl in the woods; and it chanced that once he stood on the shores
of a large lake. While he stood waiting in the rushes for the coming
of the birds, a great shadow fell on him, and in the water he saw a
reflection. He looked up to the sky; but the thing was gone. Then a
burning desire came over him to see once again that reflection in the
water, and all day he watched and waited; but night came and it had not
returned. Then he went home with his empty bag, moody and silent. His
comrades came questioning about him to know the reason, but he answered
them nothing; he sat alone and brooded. Then his friend came to him, and
to him he spoke.
“I have seen today,” he said, “that which I never saw before--a vast
white bird, with silver wings outstretched, sailing in the everlasting
blue. And now it is as though a great fire burnt within my breast. It
was but a sheen, a shimmer, a reflection in the water; but now I desire
nothing more on earth than to hold her.”
His friend laughed.
“It was but a beam playing on the water, or the shadow of your own head.
Tomorrow you will forget her,” he said.
But tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow the hunter walked alone.
He sought in the forest and in the woods, by the lakes and among the
rushes, but he could not find her. He shot no more wild fowl; what were
they to him?
“What ails him?” said his comrades.
“He is mad,” said one.
“No; but he is worse,” said another; “he would see that which none of us
have seen, and make himself a wonder.”
“Come, let us forswear his company,” said all.
So the hunter walked alone.
One night, as he wandered in the shade, very heartsore and weeping, an
old man stood before him, grander and taller than the sons of men.
“Who are you?” asked the hunter.
“I am Wisdom,” answered the old man; “but some men call me Knowledge.
All my life I have grown in these valleys; but no man sees me till he
has sorrowed much. The eyes must be washed with tears that are to behold
me; and, according as a man has suffered, I speak.”
And the hunter cried:
“Oh, you who have lived here so long, tell me, what is that great wild
bird I have seen sailing in the blue? They would have me believe she is
a dream; the shadow of my own head.”
The old man smiled.
“Her name is Truth. He who has once seen her never rests again. Till
death he desires her.”
And the hunter cried:
“Oh, tell me where I may find her.”
But the old man said:
“You have not suffered enough,” and went.
Then the hunter took from his breast the shuttle of Imagination, and
wound on it the thread of his Wishes; and all night he sat and wove a
net.
In the morning he spread the golden net upon the ground, and into it
he threw a few grains of credulity, which his father had left him, and
which he kept in his breast-pocket. They were like white puff-balls, and
when you trod on them a brown dust flew out. Then he sat by to see what
would happen. The first that came into the net was a snow-white
bird, with dove’s eyes, and he sang a beautiful song--“A human-God! a
human-God! a human-God!” it sang. The second that came was black and
mystical, with dark, lovely eyes, that looked into the depths of your
soul, and he sang only this--“Immortality!”