ivileged from molestation, by the gleam of marble
altars sleeping in everlasting sanctity, oftentimes in dreams did I and
the dark Interpreter cleave the watery veil that divided us from her
streets. We looked into the belfries, where the pendulous bells were
waiting in vain for the summons which should awaken their marriage
peals; together we touched the mighty organ keys, that sang no
_jubilates_ for the ear of Heaven--that sang no requiems for the ear of
human sorrow; together we searched the silent nurseries, where the
children were all asleep, and _had_ been asleep through five
generations. "They are waiting for the heavenly dawn," whispered the
Interpreter to himself; "and, when _that_ comes, the bells and the
organs will utter a _jubilate_ repeated by the echoes of Paradise."
Then, turning to me, he said--"This is sad: this is piteous: but less
would not have sufficed for the purposes of God. Look here: put
into a Roman clepsydra one hundred drops of water; let these run
out as the sands in an hourglass; every drop measuring the
hundredth part of a second, so that each shall represent but the
three-hundred-and-sixty-thousandth part of an hour. Now, count the drops
as they race along; and, when the fiftieth of the hundred is passing,
behold! forty-nine are not, because already they have perished; and
fifty are not, because they are yet to come. You see, therefore, how
narrow, how incalculably narrow, is the true and actual present. Of that
time which we call the present, hardly a hundredth part but belongs
either to a past which has fled, or to a future which is still on the
wing. It has perished, or it is not born. It was, or it is not. Yet even
this approximation to the truth is _infinitely_ false. For again
subdivide that solitary drop, which only was found to represent the
present, into a lower series of similar fractions, and the actual
present which you arrest measures now but the thirty-sixth millionth of
an hour; and so by infinite declensions the true and very present, in
which only we live and enjoy, will vanish into a mote of a mote,
distinguishable only by a heavenly vision. Therefore the present, which
only man possesses, offers less capacity for his footing than the
slenderest film that ever spider twisted from her womb. Therefore, also,
even this incalculable shadow from the narrowest pencil of moonlight, is
more transitory than geometry can measure, or thought of angel can
overtake. The time which _