should ye perish
belike, were it not for the wisdom gathered by a few; and they are dead
now save for the Book, and for me, who read it unto you. Now ye would
not turn back were I to bid you, and I will not bid you. Yet since the
journey shall be yet with grievous toil and much peril, and shall try
the very hearts within you, were ye as wise as Solomon and as mighty as
Alexander, I will say this much unto you; that if ye love not the earth
and the world with all your souls, and will not strive all ye may to be
frank and happy therein, your toil and peril aforesaid shall win you no
blessing but a curse. Therefore I bid you be no tyrants or builders of
cities for merchants and usurers and warriors and thralls, like the
fool who builded Goldburg to be for a tomb to him: or like the
thrall-masters of the Burg of the Four Friths, who even now, it may be,
are pierced by their own staff or overwhelmed by their own wall. But
rather I bid you to live in peace and patience without fear or hatred,
and to succour the oppressed and love the lovely, and to be the friends
of men, so that when ye are dead at last, men may say of you, they
brought down Heaven to the Earth for a little while. What say ye,
children?"

Then said Ralph: "Father, I will say the sooth about mine intent,
though ye may deem it little-minded. When I have accomplished this
quest, I would get me home again to the little land of Upmeads, to see
my father and my mother, and to guard its meadows from waste and its
houses from fire-raising: to hold war aloof and walk in free fields,
and see my children growing up about me, and lie at last beside my
fathers in the choir of St. Laurence. The dead would I love and
remember; the living would I love and cherish; and Earth shall be the
well beloved house of my Fathers, and Heaven the highest hall thereof."

"It is well," said the Sage, "all this shalt thou do and be no
little-heart, though thou do no more. And thou, maiden?"

She looked on Ralph and said: "I lost, and then I found, and then I
lost again. Maybe I shall find the lost once more. And for the rest,
in all that this man will do, I will help, living or dead, for I know
naught better to do."

"Again it is well," said the Sage, "and the lost which was verily thine
shalt thou find again, and good days and their ending shall betide
thee. Ye shall have no shame in your lives and no fear in your deaths.
Wherefore now lieth the road free before you."

T