AT last came death, sufficiency of death, and that at last relieved me, I died. I buried my beloved; it was good, I buried myself and was gone. War came, and every hand raised to murder; very good, very good, every hand raised to murder! Very good, very good, I am a murderer! It is good, I can murder and murder, and see them fall the mutilated, horror-struck youths, a multitude one on another, and then in clusters together smashed, all oozing with blood, and burned in heaps going up in a foetid smoke to get rid of them the murdered bodies of youths and men in heaps and heaps and heaps and horrible reeking heaps till it is almost enough, till I am reduced perhaps; thousands and thousands of gaping, hideous foul dead that are youths and men and me being burned with oil, and consumed in corrupt thick smoke, that rolls and taints and blackens the sky, till at last it is dark, dark as night, or death, or hell and I am dead, and trodden to nought in the smoke-sodden tomb; dead and trodden to nought in the sour black earth of the tomb; dead and trodden to nought, trodden to nought. V GOD, but it is good to have died and been trodden out trodden to nought in sour, dead earth quite to nought absolutely to nothing nothing nothing nothing. For when it is quite, quite nothing, then it is everything. When I am trodden quite out, quite, quite out every vestige gone, then I am here risen, and setting my foot on another world risen, accomplishing a resurrection risen, not born again, but risen, body the same as before, new beyond knowledge of newness, alive beyond life proud beyond inkling or furthest conception of pride living where life was never yet dreamed of, nor hinted at here, in the other world, still terrestrial myself, the same as before, yet unaccountably new. VI I, IN the sour black tomb, trodden to absolute death I put out my hand in the night, one night, and my hand touched that which was verily not me verily it was not me. Where I had been was a sudden blaze a sudden flaring blaze! So I put my hand out further, a little further and I felt that which was not I, it verily was not I it was the unknown. Ha, I was a blaze leaping up! I was a tiger bursting into sunlight. I was greedy, I was mad for the unknown. I, new-risen, resurrected, starved from the tomb starved from a life of devouring always myself now here was I, new-awakened, with my hand stretching out and touching the unknown, the real unknown, the unknown unknown. My God, but I can only say I touch, I feel the unknown! I am the first comer! Cortes, Pisarro, Columbus, Cabot, they are noth- ing, nothing! I am the first comer! I am the discoverer! I have found the other world! The unknown, the unknown! I am thrown upon the shore. I am covering myself with the sand. I am filling my mouth with the earth. I am burrowing my body into the soil. The unknown, the new world!