, belated wayfarer should, as it were, sight my little speck
of radiancy amid the darkness.

THE DEAD MAN

One evening I was sauntering along a soft, grey, dusty track between
two breast-high walls of grain. So narrow was the track that here and
there tar-besmeared cars were lying--tangled, broken, and crushed--in
the ruts of the cartway.

Field mice squeaked as a heavy car first swayed--then bent forwards
towards the sun-baked earth. A number of martins and swallows were
flitting in the sky, and constituting a sign of the immediate proximity
of dwellings and a river; though for the moment, as my eyes roved over
the sea of gold, they encountered naught beyond a belfry rising to
heaven like a ship's mast, and some trees which from afar looked like
the dark sails of a ship. Yes, there was nothing else to be seen save
the brocaded, undulating steppe where gently it sloped away
south-westwards. And as was the earth's outward appearance, so was that
of the sky--equally peaceful.

Invariably, the steppe makes one feel like a fly on a platter.
Invariably, it inclines one to believe, when the centre of the expanse
is reached, that the earth lies within the compass of the sky, with the
sun embracing it, and the stars hemming it about as, half-blinded, they
stare at the sun's beauty.

* * * * *

Presently the sun's huge, rosy-red disk impinged upon the blue shadows
of the horizon before preparing to sink into a snow-white cloud-bank;
and as it did so it bathed the ears of grain around me in radiance and
caused the cornflowers to seem the darker by comparison; and the
stillness, the herald of night, to accentuate more than ever the burden
of the earth's song.

Fanwise then spread the ruddy beams over the firmament; and, in so
doing, they cast upon my breast a shaft of light like Moses' rod, and
awoke therein a flood of calm, but ardent, sentiments which set me
longing to embrace all the evening world, and to pour into its ear
great, eloquent, and never previously voiced, utterances.

Now, too, the firmament began to spangle itself with stars; and since
the earth is equally a star, and is peopled with humankind, I found
myself longing to traverse every road throughout the universe, and to
behold, dispassionately, all the joys and sorrows of life, and to join
my fellows in drinking honey mixed with gall.

Yet also there was upon me a feeling of hunger, for not since the
morning had my wall