vering in Nirvana the quiet
Chiltern Hundreds of the soul.

XXXV

"THE KING OF TERRORS"

Skulls may not affright us, nor present fashion ordain cross-bones upon
our sepulchres; but still in the face of death the commonplaces of
comfort shrivel, and philosophy's consolations strike cold as the
symbolism of the tomb. All that lives must die; we know it, but that
death is common does not assuage particular grief, nor can the
contemplation of prehistoric ruins soften regret for one baby's smile.
Man's dogma has proved vain as his philosophy. Age after age has
composed some vision of continued life, and sought to allay its fear or
sorrow with suitable imaginations. Mummies of death outlive their
granite; vermilion and the scalping-knife lie ready for the happy
hunting grounds; beside the royal carcass two score of concubines and
warriors are buried quick; Walhalla rings with clashing swords whose
wounds close up again at sunset; heroes tread the fields of shadowy
asphodel, and on Elysian plains attenuated poets welcome the sage
newcomer to their converse; houris reward the faithful for holy
slaughter; prophets reveal a gorgeous city and pearly gates beyond the
river; the poet tells of circles winding downward to the abyss, and
upward to the Rose of Paradise; upon the bishop's tomb in St. Praxed's
one Pan is carved, and Moses with the tables; upon the gravestone of an
Albanian chief they scratch his rifle and his horse; and over the
slave's low mound in Angola plantations his basket and mattock are laid,
lest he should miss them. So various are the devices contrived for the
solace of mankind, or for his instruction. But one by one, like the dead
themselves, those devices have passed and passed away, leaving mankind
unwitting and unconsoled. For there is still one road that each
traveller must discover afresh, and death's door, at which all men
stand, opens only inwards.

Maurice Maeterlinck has always remained very conscious of that door. How
often in his whispering dramas we are made aware of it! How often,
without even the knock of warning, it suddenly gapes or stands ajar, and
unseen hands are pulling, and children are drawn in, and young girls are
drawn in, and wise men, and the old, while the living world remains
outside, still at breakfast, still busy with its evening games and
sewing, still blindly groping for its departed guide! From the outset,
Maeterlinck has been an amateur of death. In a little volume