its proud intelligence, and knows that these have
passed away like a tale that is told; like a year that is spent; like an
arrow that is shot to the stars, and flies aloft, and falls in a swamp;
like a fruit that is too well loved of the sun, and so, over-soon ripe,
is dropped from the tree and forgot on the grasses, dead to all joys of
the dawn and the noon and the summer, but still alive to the sting of
the wasp, to the fret of the aphis, to the burn of the drought, to the
theft of the parasite.

She only dimly understood, and yet she was smitten with awe and
reverence at that endless grief which had no taint of cowardice upon it,
but was pure as the patriot's despair, impersonal as the prophet's
agony.

For the first time the intellect in her consciously awoke. For the first
time she heard a human mind find voice even in its stupor and its
wretchedness to cry aloud, in reproach to its unknown Creator:

"I am _yours_! Shall I perish with the body? Why have you ever bade me
desire the light and seek it, if for ever you must thrust me into the
darkness of negation? Shall I be Nothing?--like the muscle that rots,
like the bones that crumble, like the flesh that turns to ashes, and
blows in a film on the winds? Shall I die so? I?--the mind of a man, the
breath of a god?"

* * *

He could not bear to die without leaving behind his life some work the
world would cherish.

Call it folly, call it madness, it is both: the ivory Zeus that was to
give its sculptor immortality, lives but in tradition; the bronze
Athene, that was to guard the Piraeus in eternal liberty, has long been
levelled with the dust; yet with every age the artist still gives life
for fame, still cries, "Let my body perish, but make my soul immortal!"

* * *

The spider had drawn his dusty trail across them; the rat had squatted
at their feet; the darkness of night had enshrouded and defaced them;
yet with the morning they arose, stainless, noble, undefiled.

Amongst them there was one colossal form, on which the sun poured with
its full radiance.

This was the form of a captive grinding at a millstone; the majestic,
symmetrical, supple form of a man who was also a god.

In his naked limbs there was a supreme power; in his glance there was a
divine command; his head was lifted as though no yoke could ever lie on
that proud neck; his foot seemed to spurn the earth as though no mortal
tie had ever bound him t