withhold the life he
gives to them--then, then, the soul screams out, and every sinew
cracks. So with these poor serfs. And few of them could choose but be
the brutes they seemed.

Now needs it to be said, that Odo was no land of pleasure unalloyed,
and plenty without a pause?--Odo, in whose lurking-places infants
turned from breasts, whence flowed no nourishment.--Odo, in whose
inmost haunts, dark groves were brooding, passing which you heard
most dismal cries, and voices cursing Media. There, men were
scourged; their crime, a heresy; the heresy, that Media was no
demigod. For this they shrieked. Their fathers shrieked before; their
fathers, who, tormented, said, "Happy we to groan, that our
children's children may be glad." But their children's children
howled. Yet these, too, echoed previous generations, and loudly
swore, "The pit that's dug for us may prove another's grave."

But let all pass. To look at, and to roam about of holidays, Odo
seemed a happy land. The palm-trees waved--though here and there you
marked one sear and palsy-smitten; the flowers bloomed--though dead
ones moldered in decay; the waves ran up the strand in glee--though,
receding, they sometimes left behind bones mixed with shells.

But else than these, no sign of death was seen throughout the isle.
Did men in Odo live for aye? Was Ponce de Leon's fountain there? For
near and far, you saw no ranks and files of graves, no generations
harvested in winrows. In Odo, no hard-hearted nabob slept beneath a
gentle epitaph; no _requiescat-in-pace_ mocked a sinner damned; no
_memento-mori_ admonished men to live while yet they might. Here
Death hid his skull; and hid it in the sea, the common sepulcher of
Odo. Not dust to dust, but dust to brine; not hearses but canoes. For
all who died upon that isle were carried out beyond the outer reef,
and there were buried with their sires' sires. Hence came the
thought, that of gusty nights, when round the isles, and high
toward heaven, flew the white reef's rack and foam, that then and
there, kept chattering watch and ward, the myriads that were ocean-
tombed.

But why these watery obsequies?

Odo was but a little isle, and must the living make way for the dead,
and Life's small colony be dislodged by Death's grim hosts; as the
gaunt tribes of Tamerlane o'erspread the tented pastures of the Khan?

And now, what follows, said these Islanders: "Why sow corruption in
the soil which yields us life? We would