Page:Essays and phantasies by James Thomson.djvu/330

 318 the deepest depth of gloom of the forest we passed among figures each wandering alone, and they were crowned monarchs, and the crowns seemed of fire burning ever through the brain; and in the regard of each I read the anguish and despair of a horrible isolation, and each pressed his right hand to his heart as if it were bursting with agony. And my guide said: They counted themselves as gods, looking down upon their kind, contemptuous, impassible, unbeneficent; moving them hither and thither at will, sacrificing thousands to a lust or a caprice, sending them forth by myriads to slay and be slain; before them was terror, and behind them death and desolation; for their glory and their sumptuousness millions toiled in want and misery: they moan their worse than frustrate lives. Then I paused and spoke to my leader: My heart is sick and sorrowful to death with this vision of the past of my kind; have all human lives, then, been frustrate, and not any fulfilled? And he answered: Come and see. And we turned to the right and went down through the wood, leaving the moanings behind us; and we came to a broad valley through which a calm stream rippled toward the moon, now risen on our left hand large and golden in a dim emerald sky, dim with transfusion of splendour; and her light fell and overflowed a level underledge of softest yellow cloud, and filled all the valley with a luminous mist warm as mild sunshine, and quivered golden on the far river-reaches; and elsewhere above us the immense sweep of pale azure sky throbbed with golden stars; and a wonderful mystical peace as of trance and enchantment possessed all the place. And in the meadows of deep grass where the perfume of violets mingled with themagical moonlight, by the river whose slow sway and lapse might lull their repose, we found tranquil sleepers, all with a light on their faces, all with a smile on their lips. And my