Page:Essays and phantasies by James Thomson.djvu/331

Rh leader said: Their wine was pure, and the goblet full; they drank it and were content: their day was serene, every hour filled with work that was pleasure, or with equable pleasure itself; so when night came they lay down content: they had health and strength, they were simple, truthful and just, they were free-hearted and could give bountifully, they were free-minded and lived free, they were warm-hearted and had many friends, they loved and were beloved, they had no fear of life or death; wherefore when life was fulfilled they died content: and therefore they now sleep placidly the sleep that is eternal; and the smile upon their Hps, and the light in shadow from beneath their eyelids, tell that they dream for ever some calm happy dream: they enjoy unremembering the fruit of their perfect lives. And as w^e lingered along the valley, side by side with the river, and the moon from above the southern wooded slope gazed down as in trance on that entranced Elysium, the thought of the sombre and baleful forest through which we had come weighed heavily upon my heart, and I said: How few are these in their quiet bliss to all the countless moaning multitudes we have seen on our way! And my companion answered: They are very few. And I sighed: Must it be always so? And he responded: Did Nature destroy all those infants? did Nature breed all those defects and deformities? did Nature bring forth all those idiocies and lunacies? or, was not rather their chief destroyer and producer the ignorance of Man outraging Nature? And the poor, the prisoners, the soldiery, the ascetics, the priests, the nobles, the kings; were these the work of Nature, or of the perversity of Man? And I asked: Were not the very ignorance and perversity of Man also from Nature?