In the springtime of the year three gods watched by the river.
The golden willows blew in the low winds; the waters came and went; the
moon rose full and cold over a silvery stream; the reeds sighed in the
silence. Two winters had drifted by, and one hot, drowsy summer; and all
the white still shapes upon the walls of the granary already had been
slain by the cold breath of Time. The green weeds waved in the empty
casements; the chance-sown seeds of thistles and of bell-flowers were
taking leaf between the square stones of the paven floors; on the
deserted threshold lichens and brambles climbed together; the filmy ooze
of a rank vegetation stole over the loveliness of Persephone and
devoured one by one the immortal offspring of Zeus; about the feet of
the bound sun-king in Phæros and over the calm serene mockery of Hermes'
smile the gray nets of the spiders' webs had been woven to and fro,
around and across, with the lacing of a million threads, as Fate weaves
round the limbs and covers the eyes of mortals as they stumble blindly
from their birthplace to their grave. All things, the damp and the dust,
the frost and the scorch, the newts and the rats, the fret of the
flooded water, and the stealing sure inroad of the mosses that
everywhere grew from the dews and the fogs had taken and eaten, in
hunger or sport, or had touched and thieved from, then left gangrened
and ruined.
The three gods alone remained, who, being the sons of eternal night, are
unharmed and unaltered by any passage of the years of earth,--the only
gods who never bend beneath the yoke of Time, but unblenchingly behold
the nations wither as uncounted leaves, and the lands and the seas
change places, and the cities and the empires pass away as a tale that
is told, and the deities that are worshiped in the temples change name
and attributes and cultus at the wanton will of the age that begat them.
In the still, cold moonlit air they stand together hand in band, looking
outward through the white night-mists. Other gods perished with the
faith of each age as it changed; other gods, lived by the breath of
men's lips, the tears of prayer, the smoke of sacrifice; but they--their
empire is the universe. In every young soul that leaps into the light of
life, rejoicing blindly, Oneiros has dominion, and he alone. In every
creature that breathes, from the conqueror resting on a field of blood
to the nest-bird cradled in its bed of leaves, Hypnos holds a
sovereignty which nothing mortal can long resist and live. And
Thanatos--to him belongs every created thing, past, present, and to
come; beneath his foot all generations lie, and in the hollow of his
hand he holds the worlds. Though the earth be tenantless, and the
heavens sunless, and the planets shrivel in their courses, and the
universe be desolate in an endless night, yet through the eternal
darkness Thanatos still will reign, and through its eternal solitudes he
alone will wander and he still behold his work.
Deathless as themselves, their shadows stood; and the worm and the
lizard and the newt left them alone and dared not wind about their calm
clear brows, and dared not steal to touch the roses at their
lips,--knowing that ere the birth of the worlds these were, and when the
worlds shall have perished they still will reign on,--the slow, sure,
soundless, changeless ministers of an eternal rest, of an eternal
oblivion.
A little light strayed in from the gray skies, pale as the
primrose-flowers that grow among the reeds upon the shore, and found its
way to them trembling, and shone in the far-seeing depths of their
unfathomable eyes.
To eyes which spake and said: "Sleep, Dreams, and Death;--we are the
only gods that answer prayer."
With the faint gleam of the tender evening light there came across the
threshold a human form, barefooted, bareheaded, with broken links of
golden chains gleaming here and there upon her limbs, with white robes
hanging heavily, soaked with dews and rains; with sweet familiar smells
of night-born blossoms, of wet leaves, of budding palm-boughs, of rich
dark seed-sown fields, and the white flower-foam of orchards shedding
their fragrance from about her as she moved.
Her face was bloodless as the faces of the gods; her eyes had a look of
blindness, her lips were close-locked together; her feet stumbled often,
yet her path was straight.
She had hidden by day, she had fled by night; all human creatures had
scattered from her path, in terror of her as of some unearthly thing:
she had made her way blindly yet surely through the sweet cool air,
through the shadows and the grasses, through the sighing sounds of
bells, through the leafy ways, through the pastures where the herds were
sleeping, through the daffodils blowing in the shallow brooks;--through
all the things for which her life had been athirst so long and which she
reached too late,--too late for any coolness of sweet grass beneath her
limbs to give her rest; too late for any twilight song of missel-thrush
or merle to touch her dumb dead heart to music; too late for any kiss of
clustering leaves to heal the blistering shame that burned upon her lips
and withered all their youth. And yet she loved them,--loved them never
yet more utterly than now when she came back to them, as Persephone to
the pomegranate-flowers of hell.
She crossed the threshold, whilst the reeds that grew in the water by
the steps bathed her feet and blew together softly against her limbs,
sorrowing for this life so like their own, which had dreamed of the
songs of the gods and had only heard the hiss of the snakes.
She fell at the feet of Thanatos. The bonds of her silence were
loosened; the lips dumb so long for love's sake found voice and cried
out:
"How long?--how long? Wilt thou never take pity, and stoop, and
say, 'Enough'? I have kept faith, I have kept silence, to the end. The
gods know. My life for his; my soul for his: so I said. So I have given.
I would not have it otherwise. Nay,--I am glad, I am content, I am
strong. See,--I have never spoken. The gods have let me perish in his
stead. Nay, I suffer nothing. What can it matter--for me? Nay, I thank
thee that thou hast given my vileness to be the means of his glory. He
is immortal, and I am less than the dust:--what matter? He must not
know; he must never know; and one day I might be weak, or mad, and
speak. Take me whilst still I am strong. A little while agone, in the
space in the crowds he saw me. 'So soon?' he said,--and smiled. And yet
I live! Keep faith with me; keep faith--at last. Slay me
now,--quickly,--for pity's sake! Just once,--I speak."
Thanatos, in answer, laid his hand upon her lips, and sealed them, and
their secret with them, mute, for evermore.
She had been faithful to the end.
To such a faith there is no recompense, of men or of the gods, save only
death. On the shores of the river the winds swept through the reeds,
and, sighing amidst them, mourned, saying, "A thing as free as we are,
and as fair as the light, has perished; a thing whose joys were made,
like ours, from song of the birds, from sight of the sun, from sound of
the waters, from smell of the fields, from the tossing spray of the
white fruit-boughs, from the play of the grasses at sunrise, from all
the sweet and innocent liberties of earth and air. She has perished as a
trampled leaf, as a broken shell, as a rose that falls in the public
ways, as a star that is cast down on an autumn night. She has died as
the dust dies, and none sorrow. What matter?--what matter? Men are wise,
and gods are just,--they say."
The moon shone cold and clear. The breath of the wild thyme was sweet
upon the air. The leaves blew together murmuring. The shadows of the
clouds were dark upon the stream. She lay dead at the feet of the Sons
of Night.
The Red Mouse sat without, and watched, and said, "To the end she hath
escaped me." The noisome creatures of the place stole away trembling;
the nameless things begotten by loneliness and gloom glided to their
holes as though afraid; the blind newts crept into the utter darkness
afar off; the pure cool winds alone hovered near her, and moved her
hair, and touched her limbs with all the fragrance of forest and plain,
of the pure young year and the blossoming woodlands, of the green
garden-ways and the silvery sea. The lives of the earth and the air and
the waters alone mourned for this life which was gone from amidst them,
free even in basest bondage, pure though every hand had cast defilement
on it, incorrupt through all corruption--for love's sake.