The Living cannot understand those reared on the bosom of the Dead--human faces grow pale at the approach of the spectres--at the echo of their footsteps the home-fires glimmer and flicker low on the hearthstone--the mother hides her child--the wife leads away the husband that he may not clasp hands with the wandering exile,--the evening star alone, the star of graves, smiles from Heaven on them! * * * * * Was not the silence of the forests holy? When the wind swept over the Pines, did not the mystic murmurs, sacred as the prayers of the Priest, say to you: 'Nowhere there will you find your God!' The spaces are filled with the giant skeletons torn from the dim woods; they are chained and clamped with iron and fed with steam; the eagles soar not in the air above them, nor do the glad birds twitter in the swaying branches; none among you may mount the strong horse of the desert and fly afar over the boundless steppes, rejoicing in his arrowy swiftness;--you are alone in the midst of the world! * * * * * As you wander on, poor exiles, your very gratitude is half disdain! When they lead you into cities without castles or temples, where trade and commerce rule; among whitewashed houses where the spirit of Beauty is not, and the green window-shutters are the sole adornment--murmur ye: THE DEAD! * * * * * On the shores of the seas when you dwell with Jews, Armenians, and Greeks, quarrelling forever over their vile profits; seeing not the heavens, nor hearing the thunder as it booms over the waves--murmur ye: THE DEAD! * * * * * When women in rich attire move around you, and you feel that the faint fluttering of the silken robe is far more spiritual than the life-breath of their souls--murmur ye: THE DEAD! * * * * * Float on, then, like the sacred whispers from the unhewn forests! The world will not know you, because you are of the race sprung from coffins; born and cradled in coffins; but as you rise from the grave, strew upon the ground beneath your feet the mouldering rags of your shrouds--and _he_, seated on the verge of the abyss, on the steep and slippery declivity; _he_, robed in the royal purple of power, will not survive your Resurrection--but must himself descend into the coffin! I saw imaged before me, as in a wondrous vision, the varied scenes and changes as it were of a long life--rising, progressing, and vanishing, as if bound in a single day, beginning with the morning and fleeting away with the evening shadows.