The world would not roll away down
there. He would still see himself cumbering the ground, when his powers
were taken, from him. This thought was torture. Why had he been suffered
to meet her, to love her, and to be loved by her? What had made him
so certain from the first moment, if she were not meant for him? If he
lived to be a hundred, he would never meet another. Why, because of his
love, must he bury the will and force of a man? If there were no more
coherence in God's scheme than this, let him too be incoherent! Let him
hold authority, and live outside authority! Why stifle his powers
for the sake of a coherence which did not exist! That would indeed be
madness greater than that of a mad world!
There was no answer to his thoughts in the stillness of the grove,
unless it were the cooing of a dove, or the faint thudding of the
sheep issuing again into sunlight. But slowly that stillness stole into
Miltoun's spirit. "Is it like this in the grave?" he thought. "Are the
boughs of those trees the dark earth over me? And the sound in them
the sound the dead hear when flowers are growing, and the wind passing
through them? And is the feel of this earth how it feels to lie looking
up for ever at nothing? Is life anything but a nightmare, a dream;
and is not this the reality? And why my fury, my insignificant flame,
blowing here and there, when there is really no wind, only a shroud of
still air, and these flowers of sunlight that have been dropped on me!
Why not let my spirit sleep, instead of eating itself away with rage;
why not resign myself at once to wait for the substance, of which this
is but the shadow!"
And he lay scarcely breathing, looking up at the unmoving branches
setting with their darkness the pearls of the sky.
Pages:
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275