"And thou, too, O Holly; on thee also will I confer this boon, and then of a truth shalt thou be an evergreen tree, and this will I dowell, because thou hast pleased me, Holly, for thou art not altogether a fool, like most of the sons of men, and because, though thou hast a school of philosophy as full of nonsense as those of the old days, yet hast thou not forgotten how to turn a pretty phrase about a lady's eyes.""Hullo, old fellow!" whispered Leo, with a return of his old cheerfulness, "have you been paying compliments? I should never have thought it of you!""I thank thee, O Ayesha," I replied, with as much dignity as I could command, "but if there be such a place as thou dost describe, and if in this strange place there may be found a fiery virtue that can hold off Death when he comes to pluck us by the hand, yet would I none of it.For me, O Ayesha, the world has not proved so soft a nest that I would lie in it forever.A stony-hearted mother is our earth, and stones are the bread she gives her children for their daily food.Stones to eat and bitter water for their thirst, and stripes for tender nurture.Who would endure this for many lives? Who would so load up his back with memories of lost hours and loves, and of his neighbor's sorrows that he cannot lessen, and wisdom that brings not consolation? Hard is it to die, because our delicate flesh doth shrink back from the worm it will not feel, and from that unknown which the winding-sheet doth curtain from our view.But harder still, to my fancy, would it be to live on, green in the leaf and fair, but dead and rotten at the core, and feel that other secret worm of recollection gnawing ever at the heart.""Bethink thee, Holly," she said; "yet doth long life and strength and beauty beyond measure mean power and all things that are dear to man.""And what O queen," I answered, "are those things that are dear to man? Are they not bubbles? Is not ambition but an endless ladder by which no height is ever climbed till the last unreachable rung is mounted? For height leads on to height, and there is no resting-place upon them, and rung doth grow upon rung, and there is no limit to the number.Doth not wealth satiate and become nauseous, and no longer serve to satisfy or pleasure, or to buy an hour's ease of mind?
And is there any end to wisdom that we may hope to reach it? Rather, the more we learn shall we not thereby be able only to better compass out our ignorance? Did we live ten thousand years could we hope to solve the secrets of the suns, and of the space beyond the suns, and of the Hand that hung them in the heavens? Would not our wisdom be but as a gnawing hunger calling our consciousness day by day to a knowledge.of the empty craving of our souls? Would it not be but as a light in one of these great caverns, that though bright it burn, and brighter yet, doth but the more serve to show the depths of the gloom around it? And what good thing is there beyond that we may gain by length of days?""Nay, my Holly, there is lovelove which makes all things beautiful, and doth breathe divinity into the very dust we tread.With love shall life roll gloriously on from year to year, like the voice of some great music that hath power to hold the hearer's heart poised on eagle's wings above the sordid shame and folly of the earth.""It may be so," I answered; "but if the loved one prove a broken reed to pierce us, or if the love be loved in vainwhat then? Shall a man grave his sorrows upon a stone when he hath but need to write them on the water? Nay, O _i_ She _i_ , I will live my day and grow old with my generation, and die my appointed death, and be forgotten.For I do hope for an immortality to which the little span that perchance thou canst confer will be but as a finger's length laid against the measure of the great world; and, mark this! the immortality to which I look, and which my faith doth promise to me, shall be free from the bonds that here must tie my spirit down.For, while the flesh endures, sorrow and evil and the scorpion whips of sin must endure also; but when the flesh hath fallen from us, then shall the spirit shine forth clad in the brightness of eternal good, and for its common air shall breathe so rare an ether of most noble thoughts that the highest aspiration of our manhood, or the purest incense of a maiden's prayer, would prove too earthly gross to float therein.""Thou lookest high," answered Ayesha, with a little laugh, "and speakest clearly as a trumpet and with no uncertain sound.And yet methinks that but now didst thou talk of that Unknown from which the winding-sheet doth curtain us.But perchance thou seest with the eye, of Faith, gazing on this brightness that is to be, through the painted glass of thy imagination.
Strange are the pictures of the future that mankind can thus draw with this brush of faith and this many-colored pigment of imagination! Strange, too, that no one of them doth agree with another! I could tell theebut there, what is the use? why rob a fool of his bauble? Let it pass, and I pray, O Holly, that when thou dost feel old age creeping slowly towards thyself, and the confusion of senility making havoc in thy brain, thou mayest not bitterly regret that thou didst cast away the imperial boon I would have given to thee.But so it hath ever been; man can never be content with that which his hand can pluck.If a lamp be in his reach to light him through the darkness, he must needs cast it down because it is no star.
