306 THE LAND'S END 



gazing at vacancy, might enlighten us if they would. 

 Undoubtedly there are differences of sight among 

 them which would make their descriptions vary, but 

 they would probably all agree in affirming that the 

 scene before them has no resemblance to the earlier 

 vision. This grey-faced very old man with his chin 

 on his hands, who looks as if he had not smiled these 

 many years, would perhaps smile now if he were to 

 recall that former vision, which came by teaching 

 and served well enough during his hot youth and 

 strenuous middle age. He does not see before him 

 a beautiful blessed land bright with fadeless flowers, 

 nor a great multitude of people in shining garments 

 and garlands who will come down to the shore to 

 welcome him with sounds of shouting and singing 

 and playing on instruments of divers forms, and who 

 will lead him in triumph to the gardens of everlasting 

 delight and to mansions of crystal with emerald and 

 amethyst colonnades and opal domes and turrets 

 and pinnacles. Those glories and populous realms of 

 joy have quite vanished : he sees now only what his 

 heart desires a silent land of rest. No person will 

 greet him there ; he will land and go up alone into 

 that empty and solitary place, a still grey wilderness 

 extending inland and upward hundreds of leagues, 

 an immeasurable distance, into infinity, and rising to 

 mountain ridges compared with which the Himalayas 

 are but mole-hills. The sky in that still land is always 

 pale grey-blue in colour, and the earth, too, is grey 

 like the rocks, and the trees have a grey-green foliage 

 trees more ancient in appearance than the worn 



