ogether with their triumphs, their loves together with their
crimes, their very all.

I rend my winding-sheet; a frightful craving tortures me
incessantly, as if some serpent stung continually within.

I throw a backward glance, and see the smoke of fiery ruins left
behind; the darkness of the night; the agony of the world. I see
the graves that are the work of these, my hands; I see the
background of the past--'tis nothingness! My weary body, heavy
head, and tired feet, sink, seeking rest. My eyes turn towards a
glowing horizon, boundless, immense, seeming to grow increasingly
in height and depth. I shall devour it, as I have devoured all
else.

When, O God! shall I sleep in my turn? When wilt Thou cease
creating? When may I, digging my own grave, stretch myself out
within my tomb, and, swinging thus upon the world, list the last
breath, the death-gasp, of expiring nature?

When that time comes, away my darts and shroud I'll hurl. Then
shall I free my horse, and he shall graze upon the grass that
grows upon the Pyramids, sleep in the palaces of emperors, drink
the last drop of water from the sea, and snuff the odour of the
last slow drop of blood! By day, by night, through the countless
ages, he shall roam through fields eternal as the fancy takes him;
shall leap with one great bound from Atlas to the Himalayas; shall
course, in his insolent pride, from heaven to earth; disport
himself by caracoling in the dust of crumbled empires; shall speed
across the beds of dried-up oceans; shall bound o'er ruins of
enormous cities; inhale the void with swelling chest, and roll and
stretch at ease.

Then haply, faithful one, weary as I, thou finally shalt seek some
precipice from which to cast thyself; shalt halt, panting before
the mysterious ocean of infinity; and then, with foaming mouth,
dilated nostrils, and extended neck turned towards the horizon,
thou shalt, as I, pray for eternal sleep; for repose for thy fiery
feet; for a bed of green leaves, whereon reclining thou canst
close thy burning eyes forever. There, waiting motionless upon the
brink, thou shalt desire a power stronger than thyself to kill
thee at a single blow--shalt pray for union with the dying storm,
the faded flower, the shrunken corpse. Thou shalt seek sleep,
because eternal life is torture, and the tomb is peace.

Why are we here? What hurricane has hurled us into this abyss?
What tempest soon shall bear us away towards the forgotten planets
whe