LIFE AND DEATH.
IN a city beyond far seas there dwelt a Youth who
claimed not land nor gold, yet wealthier was than
sceptered sovereign, richer far than fancy ever feigned.
The great round earth, the sun, the moon and all the
stars that flame like fireflies in the silken web of night
were his, because garnered in the salvatory of his soul.
And the beaded dew upon the morning-glories, the
crimson tints of dawn, Iris' bended bow and all the cloth-of-gold and robes of purple that mark the royal pathway
of the descending sun; the perfume of all the flowers, the
bulbul's sensuous song, and every flowing line that
marks woman's perfect form he hoarded in his heart and
gloated over as a miser does his gain. And the Youth
was in love with Life and held her to his heart as God's
most gracious gift. Ah, beautiful was she, with her
trustful eyes of blue, and hair of tangled sunbeams blown
about a brow of alabaster, arms of ivory and bust whose
rounded loveliness were a pulsing pillow where ever
dreamed Desire—beautiful beyond compare, and sweet as
odors blown across the brine from the island-valley of
Avalon, mad'ning as Lydian music, in which swoons the
soul of youth while all the passion in the blood beats time
in delirious ecstasy. And Youth and Life built fair castles
in the air, with turrets of sapphire and gates of beaten
gold, wherein they dreamed the days away on a bed of
thornless roses, drained the chalice of the honeysuckle,
ate the lotus-bud and thought of naught in all the world
but love. Of this soft dalliance was born a son, and Life
cried with falling tears, “Now I am shamed!”
“Nay,” said the Youth, “for I will hide our
child within my heart and none shall know.” And
Life laughed and
kissed the boy, and called him Ambition, and hid him in
the secret recesses of her lover's heart, and gayly went
and came as though her fair breasts had never burgeoned
with a wealth of liquid pearl. But the child was restless
within its prison house and beat against the walls, and
grew day by day, and fought with teeth and nails, until
the Youth cried out in agony. And Life said mockingly:
“Hast not room enough within thy heart for one
poor child to range—that heart which holds the earth, the
sun and stars? Cast forth the foolish rubbish—the
rainbow and the flowers, the incense and the summer
sea. Make room, make room for thine and mine—though
naught else doth remain.” He cast them forth with
fond regret, and Ambition grew and filled his heart and
strove with all his strength. The Youth looked no more
upon the fair field flowers, but thought only of the
victor's wreath; he heard no melody but fame's shrill
trumpet rising ever louder on the blast, and saw no
beauty but in Minerva's laureled brow; the cool sylvan
path became a blinding mountain trail, his hours of
dalliance days of toil and nights of agony. The hidden
son had become master of the sire, and all the host of
Heaven melted into a single star which poured its baleful
fire into his face the treacherous star of Hope. And so he
strove with augmenting strength, his goal the highest, his
guerdon the immortelles. But oft he fell, and cursed his
folly for having left the flowery vale to beat against the
barren mountain rocks; but Life upbraided him, and with
her soft breath fanned the paling star to brighter flame—
the star behind which lay the throne. And Death
followed them, shadowy, indistinct, like a spirit wrapt in
mist. And Life mocked at Death, crying: “Behold
the envious strumpet doth follow, to despoil me of mine
own! Faugh! How uncanny and how cold! What lover
would hang upon those ashen lips? Her bosom is marble,
and in
her stony heart there flames no fire. With her Ambition
perishes and the Star of Hope forever fades. Her house
is a ghastly tomb, her bed the granite rock, her lover
childless, for her womb is barren.” And the Youth,
glancing with a shudder at the figure in the mist, drew
close to Life and echoed her words with trembling lip,
“How uncanny and how cold!” Thus fared he
on through many a toilsome year, to where no shadow
falls to East or West—to manhood's glorious noon. He
looked at the towering heights before him with
undaunted eye, measuring his strength against the walls
of stone. He glanced back, and a chill swept over him,
for he was standing far up on the mountainside, he was
in a barren desert whose level waste stretched back to
the pathetic tomb where Love was left to starve and
sweet Content lay festering in her shroud.
“Fool,” cried Life, “why looked ye back
like wife of ancient Lot? Now are ye indeed
undone!” The voice was harsh and shrill, and
starting as from an uneasy dream, he looked on Life with
wide-open eyes and soul that understood. He found her
far less fair than in the heydey of his youth, when he
reveled in her voluptuous charms and loved her well. Her
face was hard and stern as that of some hag from Hell;
the sunlight had faded from her hair, the cestus of red
roses become a poisonous serpent, her fragrant breath a
consuming flame, her robe of glory, a sackcloth suit,
begrimed with ashes, torn by thorns and stained with
blood. “Thou hast changed, O Life!” he cried in
horror. “Not so,” she said; “the change is
thine. In youth you saw me not, but only dreamed you
saw. She you loved was a creature of your vain
imaginings; I am Life, mother of that scurvy brat,
Ambition.” She pointed upward, saying:
“Behold, thy star is gone, and the shining goal
hangs pathless in the heavens. When the sun hath
reached the zenith it must descend. Hence
forth your path leads downward, for every hour will sap
your lusty strength, and every step be weaker than the
last, until you sink into senility. Come, my love, you do
not know me yet; behold me as I am!” She cast
aside her soiled and ragged robe and stood revealed in all
her hideousness—a thing of horror. Her breasts distilled a
poisonous dew, around her gaunt limbs aspics crawled,
her eyes were fierce and hollow, and in one bony hand
she held a scroll on which was writ the record of her
frauds and follies, her sin and shame. “Come,”
she cried mockingly, “let us on together. You may
caress me as in the days of old, and I will answer with a
curse. Hold me to your heart and I will wither it with my
breath of flame. Praise me, and I will requite you with
dishonor and crown you with the grewsome chaplets of
grief. Fool! Thou hast striven for a prismatic bubble
bursting on the crest of a receding wave. Why scorned
you gold and lands to grasp at castles in the air? Why
dreamed of the Dimiurgus when desiring harlots
beckoned thee? Why dealt with open hand and
unsuspecting heart when thrown 'mid a world of thieves?
Hadst thou been content and not aspired to rise above
the grossness, the falsehood and the folly which is Life, I
would have loved thee well and deceived thee with a
painted beauty to the end—my foul breasts would have
been to thee ever a fragrant bed of flowers. You have
invaded Life's mysteries, the penalty whereof is pain.
You have looked upon the past; behold the future!”
He looked, and saw a tortuous path winding downward
through bogs and poisonous fens and bitter pools. In the
far distance an old man, tottering beneath his weight of
years, stood leaning on a staff, reading a riddle
propounded by a sullen sphinx, and striving with failing
intellect to understand—“
Cui Bono?”
Near by was an open grave, beside which an angel of
mercy stood
and beckoned him. “Thou hast tarried long, my
lover,” she said in a low sweet voice that was the
distant note of æolian harp, or summer zephyr
soughing through the pines. With a cry of gladness he
cast himself into her cool arms; she touched his tired
eyes with her soft white hands, she pressed a kiss upon
his lips that drained his breath in an expiring gasp of
pleasure all passionless, and, cradled upon her bosom like
a weary child, he fell asleep. The burden and its bearer,
hallowed by a pale glory as of St. Elmo's fire sank into
the open grave, yet the sphinx sat stolidly holding the
painted riddle in his stony hand—“
Cui
Bono?” But there was none to answer; the
path faded like the phosphorescent track of a ship in
midnight waters, and all was dark. He turned fiercely to
Life, a question on his lip, but ere he could utter it she
had answered, with a bitter shrug: “The angel with
the pitying eyes; the beauteous one?” My rival,
Death—so uncanny and so cold! All who love me leave
me for this sorceress, and she holds them 'neath the
magic of her spell forevermore. But what care I? I do
take the grain and give to her the husk; I drink the wine
and leave the lees. Mine the bursting bud, hers the
withered flower. Go to her and thou wilt. I have slain
Ambition and blotted thy foolish
ignis fatuus
from the firmament. For thee the very sun henceforth is
cold, the moon a monstrous wheel of blood, the stars but
aged eyes winking back their tears as they look upon thy
broken altars and ruined fanes, the grass grown green
above the ashes of thy dead. Go; I want thee not, for
thou hast seen me as I am. I am for the red wine and
wild revel, where `in Folly's cup still laughs the bubble
Joy'—for the idle day-dream and the sensuous dance, the
fond kiss of foolish Love and the velvet couch of
Lust.” Then Death came and stood near him, beautiful
with a beauty all spirituelle, a world of pity in her
eyes. But he shrank from her with a shudder, seeing
which she said: “Am I indeed so cold—I, who warm
the universe? Is the bosom of Mercy to be feared and
the breath of peace despised? What is Life that she
should mock me?—this hideous harlot whose kisses
poison and whose words betray? Is she not the mother
of all ills? Behold her demoniac brood: Hate and Horror,
Discord and Disease, Pride and Pain! she is the creature
of Time, the slave of Space. She is the bastard spawn of
Heat and Moisture—was engendered 'mid the unclean
ooze of miasmic swamps, in the womb of noisome fens.
And I? I am empress of all that is, or was, or can ever
be. Come dwell with me, and all the earth shall be thy
home, thy period eternity. Would'st live again? Then
will I make of thy clustering locks grasses to wave in the
cool meadows green, of thine eyes fair daisies that nod
in the dewy dawn, of thy heart a great blush rose worn
between the breasts of beauty, of thy body an oak to
defy the elements, of thy blood a wave breaking in
slumbrous thunder upon a beach of gold, of thy breath
the jasmine's perfume, of thy restless spirit the levin
brand that crashes in thunder peal above the storm. Why
press the cruel thorn into thy heart, the iron into thy
soul? Thus do I clasp thee to a bosom ever true, and
shield thee from the slings and arrows of the world. Thy
hot heart beats faint and ever fainter 'gainst its pulseless
pillow, until it ceases with a sigh, and thou art mine and
eternal peace is thine.”
