s the mighty conqueror,--ask him. Speak
to him: son to sire: king to king. Prick him; beg; buffet;
entreat; spurn; split the globe, he will not budge. Walk over and
over thy whole ancestral line, and they will not start. They are not
here. Ay, the dead are not to be found, even in their graves. Nor
have they simply departed; for they willed not to go; they died not
by choice; whithersoever they have gone, thither have they been
dragged; and if so be, they are extinct, their nihilities went not
more against their grain, than their forced quitting of Mardi. Either
way, something has become of them that they sought not. Truly, had
stout-hearted Marjora sworn to live here in Willamilla for ay, and
kept the vow, _that_ would have been royalty indeed; but here he
lies. Marjora! rise! Juam revolteth! Lo, I stamp upon thy scepter;
base menials tread upon thee where thou hest! Up, king, up! What? no
reply? Are not these bones thine? Oh, how the living triumph over the
dead! Marjora! answer. Art thou? or art thou not? I see thee not; I
hear thee not; I feel thee not; eyes, ears, hands, are worthless to
test thy being; and if thou art, thou art something beyond all human
thought to compass. We must have other faculties to know thee by.
Why, thou art not even a sightless sound; not the echo of an echo;
here are thy bones. Donjalolo, methinks I see thee fallen upon by
assassins:--which of thy fathers riseth to the rescue? I see thee
dying:--which of them telleth thee what cheer beyond the grave? But
they have gone to the land unknown. Meet phrase. Where is it? Not one
of Oro's priests telleth a straight story concerning it; 'twill be
hard finding their paradises. Touching the life of Alma, in Mohi's
chronicles, 'tis related, that a man was once raised from the tomb.
But rubbed he not his eyes, and stared he not most vacantly? Not one
revelation did he make. Ye gods! to have been a bystander there!

"At best, 'tis but a hope. But will a longing bring the thing
desired? Doth dread avert its object? An instinct is no preservative.
The fire I shrink from, may consume me.--But dead, and yet
alive; alive, yet dead;--thus say the sages of Maramma. But die we
then living? Yet if our dead fathers somewhere and somehow live, why
not our unborn sons? For backward or forward, eternity is the same;
already have we been the nothing we dread to be. Icy thought! But
bring it home,--it will not stay. What ho, hot heart of mine: to beat
thus lustily