Page:Essays and phantasies by James Thomson.djvu/327

 Rh on whose banks clustered cowering idiots, many with a large tumour at the throat, and whose floor was full of a restless multitude, haggard and dishevelled, swift and abrupt in movement, furious in gesticulation; horrible to hearing and to sight. And my companion murmured as I turned away shuddering: The wine of existence passed to them was drugged or poisoned, and they drank stupor or madness; death has no nepenthe for these whose wine of love was as a philter of hate: they curse and mock their frustrate lives. Then we crossed a space of upland heath, and I saw the stars shining, cold and supreme in the deep dark heavens, and I said to him at my side: Nature is very cruel to man. And he answered calmly: But how kind to all other creatures! and how kind is man to his brother, and to himself! Then we plunged again into the thick forest, as into a moaning midnight sea, and came upon an immense multitude, many shivering in thin rags, many nearly naked, all gaunt and haggard, with hollow eyes and famished faces; and some huddled together as for warmth, and some moved restlessly hither and thither, and in their moaning was eternal hunger. And my leader said: Rich men grew richer with their toil; kings and priests and great lords were fed fat with the flesh that fell away from their bones; they starved in body and in mind; their existence was a long need: they moan their frustrate lives. And we went forward continually from moaning unto moaning. And we came upon a multitude of whom some were chained together in long files, some were fettered or manacled singly; many nearly naked were scored livid or blood-red with the lash; others lay helpless or writhing on the ground as broken on the wheel or dislocated by the rack; others were clothed in garments of flames as ready for their own burning; others glared wildly bewildered through tangled locks as stupefied or maddened by years of the dungeon; and their