heir empire was the universe.

In every young soul that leaps into the light of life rejoicing blindly,
Oneiros has dominion; and he alone. In every creature that breathes,
from the conqueror resting on a field of blood to the nest bird cradled
in its bed of leaves, Hypnos holds a sovereignty which nothing mortal
can long resist and live. And Thanatos,--to him belongs every created
thing, past, present, and to come; beneath his feet all generations lie;
and in the hollow of his hand he holds the worlds; though the earth be
tenantless, and the heavens sunless, and the planets shrivel in their
courses, and the universe be shrouded in an endless night, yet through
the eternal desolation Thanatos still will reign, and through the
eternal darkness, through the immeasurable solitudes, he alone will
wander, and he still behold his work.

Deathless as themselves their shadows stood; and the worm and the lizard
and the newt left them alone and dared not wind about their calm clear
brows, and dared not steal to touch the roses at their lips, knowing
that ere the birth of the worlds these were, and when the worlds shall
have perished these still will reign on:--the slow, sure, soundless,
changeless ministers of an eternal rest, of an eternal oblivion.

A late light strayed in from the grey skies, pale as the primrose
flowers that grew amongst the reeds upon the shore; and found its way to
them, trembling; and shone in the far-seeing depths of their
unfathomable eyes.

The eyes which spake and said:

"Sleep, dreams, and death:--we are the only gods that answer prayer."

* * *

Night had come; a dark night of earliest spring. The wild day had sobbed
itself to sleep after a restless life with fitful breath of storm and
many sighs of shuddering breezes.

The sun had sunk, leaving long tracks of blood-red light across one-half
the heavens.

There was a sharp crisp coldness as of lingering frost in the gloom and
the dulness. Heavy clouds, as yet unbroken, hung over the cathedral and
the clustering roofs around it in dark and starless splendour.

Over the great still plains which stretched eastward and southward,
black with the furrows of the scarce-budded corn, the wind blew hard;
blowing the river and the many streamlets spreading from it into foam;
driving the wintry leaves which still strewed the earth thickly, hither
and thither in legions; breaking boughs that had weathered the winter
hurricanes, and