God smote Savannah-la-Mar, and in one night, by earthquake, removed her,
with all her towers standing and population sleeping, from the steadfast
foundations of the shore to the coral floors of ocean. And God
said--"Pompeii did I bury and conceal from men through seventeen
centuries: this city I will bury, but not conceal. She shall be a
monument to men of my mysterious anger; set in azure light through
generations to come: for I will enshrine her in a crystal dome of my
tropic seas." This city, therefore, like a mighty galleon with all her
apparel mounted, streamers flying, and tackling perfect, seems floating
along the noiseless depths of ocean: and oftentimes in glassy calms,
through the translucid atmosphere of water that now stretches like an
air-woven awning above the silent encampment, mariners from every clime
look down into her courts and terraces, count her gates, and number the
spires of her churches. She is one ample cemetery, and _has_ been for
many a year; but in the mighty calms that brood for weeks over tropic
latitudes, she fascinates the eye with a _Fata-Morgana_ revelation, as
of human life still subsisting in submarine asylums sacred from the
storms that torment our upper air.
Thither, lured by the loveliness of cerulean depths, by the peace of
human dwellings privileged from molestation, by the gleam of marble
altars sleeping in everlasting sanctity, oftentimes in dreams did I and
the dark Interpreter cleave the watery veil that divided us from her
streets. We looked into the belfries, where the pendulous bells were
waiting in vain for the summons which should awaken their marriage
peals; together we touched the mighty organ keys, that sang no
_jubilates_ for the ear of Heaven--that sang no requiems for the ear of
human sorrow; together we searched the silent nurseries, where the
children were all asleep, and _had_ been asleep through five
generations. "They are waiting for the heavenly dawn," whispered the
Interpreter to himself; "and, when _that_ comes, the bells and the
organs will utter a _jubilate_ repeated by the echoes of Paradise."
Then, turning to me, he said--"This is sad: this is piteous: but less
would not have sufficed for the purposes of God. Look here: put
into a Roman clepsydra one hundred drops of water; let these run
out as the sands in an hourglass; every drop measuring the
hundredth part of a second, so that each shall represent but the
three-hundred-and-sixty-thousandth part of an hour. Now, count the drops
as they race along; and, when the fiftieth of the hundred is passing,
behold! forty-nine are not, because already they have perished; and
fifty are not, because they are yet to come. You see, therefore, how
narrow, how incalculably narrow, is the true and actual present. Of that
time which we call the present, hardly a hundredth part but belongs
either to a past which has fled, or to a future which is still on the
wing. It has perished, or it is not born. It was, or it is not. Yet even
this approximation to the truth is _infinitely_ false. For again
subdivide that solitary drop, which only was found to represent the
present, into a lower series of similar fractions, and the actual
present which you arrest measures now but the thirty-sixth millionth of
an hour; and so by infinite declensions the true and very present, in
which only we live and enjoy, will vanish into a mote of a mote,
distinguishable only by a heavenly vision. Therefore the present, which
only man possesses, offers less capacity for his footing than the
slenderest film that ever spider twisted from her womb. Therefore, also,
even this incalculable shadow from the narrowest pencil of moonlight, is
more transitory than geometry can measure, or thought of angel can
overtake. The time which _is_, contracts into a mathematic point; and
even that point perishes a thousand times before we can utter its birth.
All is finite in the present; and even that finite is infinite in its
velocity of flight towards death. But in God there is nothing finite;
but in God there is nothing transitory; but in God there _can_ be
nothing that tends to death. Therefore, it follows--that for God there
can be no present. The future is the present of God; and to the future
it is that he sacrifices the human present. Therefore it is that he
works by earthquake. Therefore it is that he works by grief. Oh, deep is
the ploughing of earthquake! Oh, deep," [and his voice swelled like a
_sanctus_ rising from the choir of a cathedral,]--"oh, deep is the
ploughing of grief! But oftentimes less would not suffice for the
agriculture of God. Upon a night of earthquake he builds a thousand
years of pleasant habitations for man. Upon the sorrow of an infant, he
raises oftentimes, from human intellects glorious vintages that could
not else have been. Less than these fierce ploughshares would not have
stirred the stubborn soil. The one is needed for earth, our planet--for
earth itself as the dwelling-place of man. But the other is needed yet
oftener for God's mightiest instrument; yes," [and he looked solemnly at
myself,] "is needed for the mysterious children of the earth!"