dmen, their children, have in
their turn come into the field, to eat of the fruit they sowed, to sow
in turn a seed of which they themselves shall not see the harvest, whose
sheaves others shall bind, whose ears others shall thresh, and of whose
corn others shall make bread after them. With our eyes we may yet see
the graves of two hundred generations of men, whose tombs serve but to
mark that boundary more clearly, whose fierce warfare, when they fought
against the master, could not drive back that limit by a handbreadth,
whose uncomplaining labour, when they accepted their lot patiently,
earned them not one scant foot of soil wherewith to broaden their
inheritance as reward for their submission; and of them all, neither
man nor woman was ever forgotten in the day of reckoning, nor was one
suffered to linger in the light. Death will bury a thousand generations
more, in graves as deep, strengthening year by year the strong chain of
his grim landmarks. He will remember us every one when the time comes;
to some of us he will vouchsafe a peaceful end, but some shall pass
away in mortal agony, and some shall be dragged unconscious to the other
side; but all must go. Some shall not see him till he is at hand, and
some shall dream of him in year-long dreams of horror, to be taken
unawares at the last. He will remember us every one and will come to us,
and the place of our rest shall be marked for centuries, for years, or
for seconds, for each a stone, or a few green sods laid upon a mound
beneath the sky, or the ripple on a changing wave when the loaded sack
has slipped from the smooth plank, and the sound of a dull splash has
died away in the wind. There be strong men, as well as weak, who shudder
and grow cold when they think of that yet undated day which must close
with its black letter their calendar of joy and sorrow; there are
weaklings, as well as giants, who fear death for those they love,
but who fear not anything else at all. The master treats courage and
cowardice alike; Achilles and Thersites must alike perish, and none will
be so bold as to say that he can tell the dust of the misshapen varlet
from the ashes of the swift-footed destroyer, whose hair was once so
bright, whose eyes were so fierce, whose mighty heart was so slothless,
so wrathful, so inexorable and so brave.

The Wanderer was of those who dread nothing save for the one
dearly-beloved object, but who, when that fear is once roused by a real
or an ima