Page:Above the battle.djvu/194

Rh bitter struggle, his indestructible optimism even in the midst of disaster, shine above the carnage of Europe, over which the dusk is gathering, like the splendour of the setting sun.

There is one page which he wrote, which cannot be read without emotion—an immortal page in which he represents the noble Herakles, resting after his labours on the maternal earth:

"There are hours," he says, "when in feeling the earth beneath our feet, we experience a joy deep and tranquil as the earth herself. How often on my journey along footpaths and across fields I have realised suddenly that it was indeed the earth on which I trod, that I belonged to her, as she belonged to me! Then without thinking I went more slowly, because it was not worth while to hasten across her surface, because I was conscious of her and possessed her at each step I took, and my soul was moving within her depths. How many times at the fall of day, as I lay by the side of a ditch, my eyes turned towards the faint blue of the eastern sky, I have suddenly realised that the earth was speeding on her journey hastening from the fatigues of the day and the limited horizons which the sun illumines, and rushing with prodigious force towards the 190