CASTLES BY THE SEA 73 



poignant grief than that of the lonely, weary man, 

 especially in some solitary place, who remembers his 

 loneliness, that he is divided by death and change and 

 absence from his own kin who were dearer than all 

 the world to him ? And just as his thought is the 

 saddest, so the dream of a return to and reunion with 

 the lost ones is assuredly the most blissful he can know. 



Now, on the verge of sleep, seeing that picture 

 pass before me the ineffable sadness of the lonely 

 hunter in the wilderness, the vision, the unutterable 

 joy, and the fearful end, I thought (for thought now 

 came to me) of my own case my loneliness, for I, 

 too, was lonely, not because I was there by myself on 

 that promontory, but because a whole ocean and the 

 impassable ocean of death separated me from my own 

 people. Then it came into my mind that I, too, fast 

 falling into oblivion, would experience that blissful 

 vision ; that the hoarse sound of the sea far below on 

 the rocks would sink and change to the sound of the 

 summer wind in the old poplars, that I would see the 

 old roof and all those I first knew and loved on the 

 earth see them as in the old days " returned in 

 beauty from the dust," and seeing them should start 

 forward " in act to rise," and so end my wanderings 

 by falling from that sloping, perilous rock ! 



In a moment I became wide awake, for I did not 

 wish to perish by accident just yet, and, jumping 

 up, I stretched out my arms, stamped with my feet, 

 and rubbed my eyes vigorously to get rid of my 

 drowsiness ; then sat down quietly and resumed my 

 watch of gulls and gannets. 



