oft a nest that I would lie
in it for ever. A stony-hearted mother is our earth, and stones are the
bread she gives her children for their daily food. Stones to eat and
bitter water for their thirst, and stripes for tender nurture. Who would
endure this for many lives? Who would so load up his back with memories
of lost hours and loves, and of his neighbour's sorrows that he cannot
lessen, and wisdom that brings not consolation? Hard is it to die,
because our delicate flesh doth shrink back from the worm it will not
feel, and from that unknown which the winding-sheet doth curtain from
our view. But harder still, to my fancy, would it be to live on, green
in the leaf and fair, but dead and rotten at the core, and feel that
other secret worm of recollection gnawing ever at the heart."

"Bethink thee, Holly," she said; "yet doth long life and strength and
beauty beyond measure mean power and all things that are dear to man."

"And what, oh Queen," I answered, "are those things that are dear to
man? Are they not bubbles? Is not ambition but an endless ladder by
which no height is ever climbed till the last unreachable rung is
mounted? For height leads on to height, and there is no resting-place
upon them, and rung doth grow upon rung, and there is no limit to the
number. Doth not wealth satiate, and become nauseous, and no longer
serve to satisfy or pleasure, or to buy an hour's peace of mind? And is
there any end to wisdom that we may hope to reach it? Rather, the more
we learn, shall we not thereby be able only to better compass out our
ignorance? Did we live ten thousand years could we hope to solve the
secrets of the suns, and of the space beyond the suns, and of the Hand
that hung them in the heavens? Would not our wisdom be but as a gnawing
hunger calling our consciousness day by day to a knowledge of the empty
craving of our souls? Would it not be but as a light in one of these
great caverns, that, though bright it burn, and brighter yet, doth but
the more serve to show the depths of the gloom around it? And what good
thing is there beyond that we may gain by length of days?"

"Nay, my Holly, there is love--love which makes all things beautiful,
and doth breathe divinity into the very dust we tread. With love shall
life roll gloriously on from year to year, like the voice of some great
music that hath power to hold the hearer's heart poised on eagles' wings
above the sordid shame and folly of the earth."

"It may