AUTUMN 213 



with shrill glad voices playing merry games in all the 

 hollows of the hills, and staining their lips purple with 

 blackberries, as in the old forgotten years. And 

 once more strife, and all natural calamities — cold, 

 and fever, and wasting famine ; people with white 

 skeleton faces sitting in rows on the hill-side, like 

 those who sit by the river waiting for the slow ferry- 

 man to ferry them over, one by one. Slain by 

 men or by some natural agency, still they pass 

 and pass, and are succeeded by others — other tribes, 

 other races, speaking a new language, but swayed 

 by the same passion, and war still succeeds war. 

 Then peace again, the lasting peace that causes all 

 sweet and gentle feelings, all virtues, all graces, 

 to flourish — the peace that is like a secret, unfelt 

 malady which is slowly consuming a beautiful woman's 

 life. And after long quiet, the battle-cry, the strange 

 men with the old wolfish hunger and fury in their faces, 

 the heavens darkened again with the smoke of cruel 

 fires ; and after the storm, quiet again, the old silence 

 and desolation, wild-flowers blooming everywhere on 

 the graves of a dead, forgotten people. 



We can imagine that even he, albeit immortal, re- 

 calling and seeing again that immeasurable procession 

 of human forms — the long long series of events and 

 the millions of passionate, strenuous lives that have 

 ceased to be — all compressed into a few moments of 

 time, would feel his mind darkened with a sudden 

 great shadow of sorrow. But the shadow would quickly 



