these curt limits. If your
life were but a fever fit,--the madness of a night, whose follies were
all to be forgotten in the dawn, it might matter little how you fretted
away the sickly hours,--what toys you snatched at, or let fall,--what
visions you followed wistfully with the deceived eyes of sleepless
phrenzy. Is the earth only an hospital? Play, if you care to play, on
the floor of the hospital dens. Knit its straw into what crowns please
you; gather the dust of it for treasure, and die rich in that, clutching
at the black motes in the air with your dying hands;--and yet, it may be
well with you. But if this life be no dream, and the world no hospital;
if all the peace and power and joy you can ever win, must be won now;
and all fruit of victory gathered here, or never;--will you still,
throughout the puny totality of your life, weary yourselves in the fire
for vanity? If there is no rest which remaineth for you, is there none
you might presently take? was this grass of the earth made green for
your shroud only, not for your bed? and can you never lie down _upon_
it, but only _under_ it? The heathen, to whose creed you have returned,
thought not so. They knew that life brought its contest, but they
expected from it also the crown of all contest: No proud one! no
jewelled circlet flaming through Heaven above the height of the
unmerited throne; only some few leaves of wild olive, cool to the tired
brow, through a few years of peace. It should have been of gold, they
thought; but Jupiter was poor; this was the best the god could give
them. Seeking a greater than this, they had known it a mockery. Not in
war, not in wealth, not in tyranny, was there any happiness to be found
for them--only in kindly peace, fruitful and free. The wreath was to be
of _wild_ olive, mark you:--the tree that grows carelessly, tufting the
rocks with no vivid bloom, no verdure of branch; only with soft snow of
blossom, and scarcely fulfilled fruit, mixed with grey leaf and thornset
stem; no fastening of diadem for you but with such sharp embroidery! But
this, such as it is, you may win while yet you live; type of grey honour
and sweet rest.[2] Free-heartedness, and graciousness, and undisturbed
trust, and requited love, and the sight of the peace of others, and the
ministry to their pain;--these, and the blue sky above you, and the
sweet waters and flowers of the earth beneath; and mysteries and
presences, innumerable, of living things,--these