_Yet I—I saw. Yea, from my lofty stand I saw each life continuous extend Beyond its mortal bound, and reach a hand To others and to others without end. I saw the generations like a river Flow down from age to age, and all the vast Complex of human passion float and quiver— A wondrous mirror where the Gods were glassed._ _And still through all these ages scarce a change Has touched my mountain slopes or seaward curve, And still the folk beneath the old laws range, And from their ancient customs hardly swerve; Still Love and Death, veiled figures, hand in hand, Move o’er men’s heads, dread, irresistible, To ope the portals of that other land Where the great Voices sound and Visions dwell._ THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY Love and Death move through this world of ours like things apart—underrunning it truly, and everywhere present, yet seeming to belong to some other mode of existence. When Death comes, breaking into the circle of our friends, words fail us, our mental machinery ceases to operate, all our little stores of wit and wisdom, our maxims, our mottoes, accumulated from daily experience, evaporate and are of no avail. These things do not seem to touch or illuminate in any effective way the strange vast Presence whose wings darken the world for us. And with Love, though in an opposite sense, it is the same. Words are of no use, all our philosophy fails—whether to account for the pain, or to fortify against the glamour, or to describe the glory of the experience. These figures, Love and Death, move through the world, like closest friends indeed, never far separate, and together dominating it in a kind of triumphant superiority; and yet like bitterest enemies, dogging each other’s footsteps, undoing each other’s work, fighting for the bodies and souls of mankind. Is it possible that at length and after ages we may attain to liberate ourselves from their overlordship—to dominate _them_ and make them our ministers and attendants? Can we wrest them from their seeming tyranny over the human race, and from their hostility to each other? Can we persuade them to lay aside their disguise and appear to us for what they no doubt are—even the angels and messengers of a new order of existence? It is a great and difficult enterprise. Yet it is one, I think, which we of this generation cannot avoid. We can no longer turn our faces away from Death, and make as if we did not perceive his presence or hear his challenge. This age, which is learning to look the facts of Nature steadily in the face, and see _through_ them, must also learn to face this ultimate fact and look through it. And it will surely—and perhaps only—be by allying ourselves to Love that we shall be able to do so—that we shall succeed in our endeavor.