Under a Mimosa-Tree.
As I travelled across an African plain the sun shone down hotly. Then I
drew my horse up under a mimosa-tree, and I took the saddle from him and
left him to feed among the parched bushes. And all to right and to left
stretched the brown earth. And I sat down under the tree, because the
heat beat fiercely, and all along the horizon the air throbbed. And
after a while a heavy drowsiness came over me, and I laid my head down
against my saddle, and I fell asleep there. And, in my sleep, I had a
curious dream.
I thought I stood on the border of a great desert, and the sand blew
about everywhere. And I thought I saw two great figures like beasts of
burden of the desert, and one lay upon the sand with its neck stretched
out, and one stood by it. And I looked curiously at the one that lay
upon the ground, for it had a great burden on its back, and the sand was
thick about it, so that it seemed to have piled over it for centuries.
And I looked very curiously at it. And there stood one beside me
watching. And I said to him, “What is this huge creature who lies here
on the sand?”
And he said, “This is woman; she that bears men in her body.”
And I said, “Why does she lie here motionless with the sand piled round
her?”
And he answered, “Listen, I will tell you! Ages and ages long she has
lain here, and the wind has blown over her. The oldest, oldest, oldest
man living has never seen her move: the oldest, oldest book records that
she lay here then, as she lies here now, with the sand about her. But
listen! Older than the oldest book, older than the oldest recorded
memory of man, on the Rocks of Language, on the hard-baked clay of
Ancient Customs, now crumbling to decay, are found the marks of her
footsteps! Side by side with his who stands beside her you may trace
them; and you know that she who now lies there once wandered free over
the rocks with him.”
And I said, “Why does she lie there now?”
And he said, “I take it, ages ago the Age-of-dominion-of-muscular-force
found her, and when she stooped low to give suck to her young, and her
back was broad, he put his burden of subjection on to it, and tied it
on with the broad band of Inevitable Necessity. Then she looked at the
earth and the sky, and knew there was no hope for her; and she lay down
on the sand with the burden she could not loosen. Ever since she has
lain here. And the ages have come, and the ages have gone, but the band
of Inevitable Necessity has not been cut.”
And I looked and saw in her eyes the terrible patience of the centuries;
the ground was wet with her tears, and her nostrils blew up the sand.
And I said, “Has she ever tried to move?”
And he said, “Sometimes a limb has quivered. But she is wise; she knows
she cannot rise with the burden on her.”
And I said, “Why does not he who stands by her leave her and go on?”
And he said, “He cannot. Look--”
And I saw a broad band passing along the ground from one to the other,
and it bound them together.
He said, “While she lies there he must stand and look across the
desert.”
And I said, “Does he know why he cannot move?”
And he said, “No.”
And I heard a sound of something cracking, and I looked, and I saw the
band that bound the burden on to her back broken asunder; and the burden
rolled on to the ground.
And I said, “What is this?”
And he said, “The Age-of-muscular-force is dead. The
Age-of-nervous-force has killed him with the knife he holds in his hand;
and silently and invisibly he has crept up to the woman, and with that
knife of Mechanical Invention he has cut the band that bound the burden
to her back. The Inevitable Necessity is broken. She might rise now.”
And I saw that she still lay motionless on the sand, with her eyes open
and her neck stretched out. And she seemed to look for something on the
far-off border of the desert that never came. And I wondered if she were
awake or asleep. And as I looked her body quivered, and a light came
into her eyes, like when a sunbeam breaks into a dark room.