en graves, and men feast and laugh, while
demon and angel are contending for their doom.

It was night in heaven; all was unutterably silent; the music of the
spheres had paused, and not a sound came from the angels of the stars;
and they who sat upon those shining thrones were three thousand and ten,
each resembling each. Eternal youth clothed their radiant limbs
with celestial beauty, and on their faces was written the dread of
calm,--that fearful stillness which feels not, sympathizes not with the
doom over which it broods. War, tempest, pestilence, the rise of
empires and their fall, they ordain, they compass, unexultant and
uncompassionate. The fell and thrilling crimes that stalk abroad when
the world sleeps,--the parricide with his stealthy step and horrent brow
and lifted knife; the unwifed mother that glides out and looks behind,
and behind, and shudders, and casts her babe upon the river, and hears
the wail, and pities not--the splash, and does not tremble,--these the
starred kings behold, to these they lead the unconscious step; but
the guilt blanches not their lustre, neither doth remorse wither their
unwrinkled youth. Each star wore a kingly diadem; round the loins of
each was a graven belt, graven with many and mighty signs; and the foot
of each was on a burning ball, and the right arm drooped over the knee
as they bent down from their thrones. They moved not a limb or feature,
save the finger of the right hand, which ever and anon moved slowly
pointing, and regulated the fates of men as the hand of the dial speaks
the career of time.

One only of the three thousand and ten wore not the same aspect as his
crowned brethren,--a star smaller than the rest, and less luminous; the
countenance of this star was not impressed with the awful calmness of
the others, but there were sullenness and discontent upon his mighty
brow.

And this star said to himself, "Behold! I am created less glorious
than my fellows, and the archangel apportions not to me the same lordly
destinies. Not for me are the dooms of kings and bards, the rulers of
empires, or, yet nobler, the swayers and harmonists of souls. Sluggish
are the spirits and base the lot of the men I am ordained to lead
through a dull life to a fameless grave. And wherefore? Is it mine own
fault, or is it the fault which is not mine, that I was woven of beams
less glorious than my brethren? Lo! when the archangel comes, I will
bow not my crowned head to his decrees