es, and the making of fresh gardens of delight, on which
his heart was set. So he, being weary of a barren land and of an empty
treasury, with all his might prayed to the gods that all he touched
might turn to gold, even as he had heard had happened to some magician
long before in other ages. And the gods gave him the thing he craved;
and his treasury overflowed. No king had ever been so rich, as this king
now became in the short space of a single summer-day.

"But it was bought with a price.

"When he stretched out his hand to gather the rose that blossomed in his
path, a golden flower scentless and stiff was all he grasped. When he
called to him the carrier-dove that sped with a scroll of love words
across the mountains, the bird sank on his breast a carven piece of
metal. When he was athirst and shouted to his cupbearer for drink, the
red wine ran a stream of molten gold. When he would fain have eaten, the
pulse and the pomegranate grew alike to gold between his teeth. And lo!
at eventide, when he sought the silent chambers of his harem, saying,
'Here at least shall I find rest,' and bent his steps to the couch
whereon his best-beloved slave was sleeping, a statue of gold was all he
drew into his eager arms, and cold shut lips of sculptured gold were all
that met his own.

"That night the great king slew himself, unable any more to bear this
agony; since all around him was desolation, even though all around him
was wealth.

"Now the world is too like that king, and in its greed of gold it will
barter its life away.

"Look you,--this thing is certain--I say that the world will perish,
even as that king perished, slain as he was slain, by the curse of its
own fulfilled desire.

"The future of the world is written. For God has granted their prayer to
men. He has made them rich, and their riches shall kill them.

"When all green places have been destroyed in the builder's lust of
gain:--when all the lands are but mountains of brick, and piles of wood
and iron:--when there is no moisture anywhere; and no rain ever
falls:--when the sky is a vault of smoke; and all the rivers reek with
poison:--when forest and stream, and moor and meadow, and all the old
green wayside beauty are things vanished and forgotten:--when every
gentle timid thing of brake and bush, of air and water, has been killed
because it robbed them of a berry or a fruit:--when the earth is one
vast city, whose young children behold neither the green