ld destroy all.

This perfume of a tuberose is the breath of corruption. On the ground,
I see crows near me, like hens.

Myself! I think of myself, of all that I am. Myself, my home, my
hours; the past, and the future,--it was going to be like the past!
And at that moment I feel, weeping within me and dragging itself from
some little bygone trifle, a new and tragical sorrow in dying, a hunger
to be warm once more in the rain and the cold: to enclose myself in
myself in spite of space, to hold myself back, to live. I called for
help, and then lay panting, watching the distance in desperate
expectation. "Stretcher-bearers!" I cry. I do not hear myself; but if
only the others heard me!

Now that I have made that effort, I can do no more, and my head lies
there at the entrance to that world-great wound.

There is nothing now.

Yet there is that man. He was laid out like one dead. But suddenly,
through his shut eyes, he smiled. He, no doubt, will come back here on
earth, and something within me thanks him for his miracle.

And there was that one, too, whom I saw die. He raised his hand, which
was drowning. Hidden in the depths of the others, it was only by that
hand that he lived, and called, and saw. On one finger shone a
wedding-ring, and it told me a sort of story. When his hand ceased to
tremble, and became a dead plant with that golden flower, I felt the
beginning of a farewell rise in me like a sob. But there are too many
of them for one to mourn them all. How many of them are there on all
this plain? How many, how many of them are there in all this moment?
Our heart is only made for one heart at a time. It wears us out to
look at all. One may say, "There are the others," but it is only a
saying. "You shall not know; you shall _not_ know."

Barrenness and cold have descended on all the body of the earth.
Nothing moves any more, except the wind, that is charged with cold
water, and the shells, that are surrounded by infinity, and the crows,
and the thought that rolls immured in my head.

* * * * * *

They are motionless at last, they who forever marched, they to whom
space was so great! I see their poor hands, their poor legs, their
poor backs, resting on the earth. They are tranquil at last. The
shells which bespattered them are ravaging another world. They are in
the peace eternal.

All is accomplished, all has terminated there. It is there, in tha