"Good evening," said the poet."Can you give a traveller a night's lodging?""Willingly," answered Ernest; and then he added, smiling, "Methinks I never saw the Great Stone Face look so hospitably at a stranger."The poet sat down on the bench beside him, and he and Ernest talked together.Often had the poet held intercourse with the wittiest and the wisest, but never before with a man like Ernest, whose thoughts and feelings gushed up with such a natural freedom, and who made great truths so familiar by his simple utterance of them.Angels, as had been so often said, seemed to have wrought with him at his labor in the fields; angels seemed to have sat with him by the fireside; and, dwelling with angels as friend with friends, he had imbibed the sublimity of their ideas, and imbued it with the sweet and lowly charm of household words.So thought the poet.And Ernest, on the other hand, was moved and agitated by the living images which the poet flung out of his mind, and whichpeopled all the air about the cottage-door with shapes of beauty, both gay and pensive.The sympathies of these two men instructed them with a profounder sense than either could have attained alone.Their minds accorded into one strain, and made delightful music which neither of them could have claimed as all his own, nor distinguished his own share from the other's.They led one another, as it were, into a high pavilion of their thoughts, so remote, and hitherto so dim, that they had never entered it before, and so beautiful that they desired to be there always.
As Ernest listened to the poet, he imagined that the Great Stone Face was bending forward to listen too.He gazed earnestly into the poet's glowing eyes.
"Who are you, my strangely gifted guest?" he said.
The poet laid his finger on the volume that Ernest had been reading."You have read these poems," said he."You know me, then,--for Iwrote them."
Again, and still more earnestly than before, Ernest examined the poet's features; then turned towards the Great Stone Face; then back, with an uncertain aspect, to his guest.But his countenance fell; he shook his head, and sighed.
"Wherefore are you sad?" inquired the poet.
"Because," replied Ernest, "all through life I have awaited the fulfilment of a prophecy; and, when I read these poems, I hoped that it might be fulfilled in you.""You hoped," answered the poet, faintly smiling, "to find in me the likeness of the Great Stone Face.And you are disappointed, as formerly with Mr.Gathergold, and Old Blood-and-Thunder, and Old Stony Phiz.Yes, Ernest, it is my doom.You must add my name to the illustrious three, and record another failure of your hopes.For--in shame and sadness do I speak it, Ernest--I am not worthy to be typified by yonder benign and majestic image.""And why?" asked Ernest.He pointed to the volume."Are not those thoughts divine?""They have a strain of the Divinity," replied the poet."You can hear in them the far-off echo of a heavenly song.But my life, dear Ernest, has notcorresponded with my thought.I have had grand dreams, but they have been only dreams, because I have lived--and that, too, by my own choice-- among poor and mean realities.Sometimes even--shall I dare to say it?--I lack faith in the grandeur, the beauty, and the goodness, which my own words are said to have made more evident in nature and in human life.Why, then, pure seeker of the good and true, shouldst thou hope to find me, in yonder image of the divine?"The poet spoke sadly, and his eyes were dim with tears.So, likewise, were those of Ernest.
At the hour of sunset, as had long been his frequent custom, Ernest was to discourse to an assemblage of the neighboring inhabitants in the open air.He and the poet, arm in arm, still talking together as they went along, proceeded to the spot.It was a small nook among the hills, with a gray precipice behind, the stern front of which was relieved by the pleasant foliage of many creeping plants that made a tapestry for the naked rock, by hanging their festoons from all its rugged angles.At a small elevation above the ground, set in a rich framework of verdure, there appeared a niche, spacious enough to admit a human figure, with freedom for such gestures as spontaneously accompany earnest thought and genuine emotion.Into this natural pulpit Ernest ascended, and threw a look of familiar kindness around upon his audience.They stood, or sat, or reclined upon the grass, as seemed good to each, with the departing sunshine falling obliquely over them, and mingling its subdued cheerfulness with the solemnity of a grove of ancient trees, beneath and amid the boughs of which the golden rays were constrained to pass.In another direction was seen the Great Stone Face, with the same cheer, combined with the same solemnity, in its benignant aspect.
Ernest began to speak, giving to the people of what was in his heart and mind.His words had power, because they accorded with his thoughts; and his thoughts had reality and depth, because they harmonized with the life which he had always lived.It was not mere breath that this preacher uttered; they were the words of life, because a life of good deeds and holy love was melted into them.Pearls, pure and rich, had been dissolved into this precious draught.The poet, as he listened, felt that the being andcharacter of Ernest were a nobler strain of poetry than he had ever written.His eyes glistening with tears, he gazed reverentially at the venerable man, and said within himself that never was there an aspect so worthy of a prophet and a sage as that mild, sweet, thoughtful countenance, with the glory of white hair diffused about it.At a distance, but distinctly to be seen, high up in the golden light of the setting sun, appeared the Great Stone Face, with hoary mists around it, like the white hairs around the brow of Ernest.Its look of grand beneficence seemed to embrace the world.
At that moment, in sympathy with a thought which he was about to utter, the face of Ernest assumed a grandeur of expression, so imbued with benevolence, that the poet, by an irresistible impulse, threw his arms aloft and shouted,"Behold! Behold! Ernest is himself the likeness of the Great Stone Face!"Then all the people looked, and saw that what the deep-sighted poet said was true.The prophecy was fulfilled.But Ernest, having finished what he had to say, took the poet's arm, and walked slowly homeward, still hoping that some wiser and better man than himself would by and by appear, bearing a resemblance to the GREAT STONE FACE.
