The New Adam and Eve (From "Mosses from an Old Manse")Hawthorne, Nathaniel
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The New Adam and Eve (From "Mosses from an Old Manse")
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
New England -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Short stories
The day is near its close when these pilgrims, who derive their being
from no dead progenitors, reach the cemetery of Mount Auburn. With
light hearts—for earth and sky now gladden each other with beauty—they
tread along the winding paths, among marble pillars, mimic temples,
urns, obelisks, and sarcophagi, sometimes pausing to contemplate these
fantasies of human growth, and sometimes to admire the flowers
wherewith nature converts decay to loveliness. Can Death, in the midst
of his old triumphs, make them sensible that they have taken up the
heavy burden of mortality which a whole species had thrown down? Dust
kindred to their own has never lain in the grave. Will they then
recognize, and so soon, that Time and the elements have an indefeasible
claim upon their bodies? Not improbably they may. There must have been
shadows enough, even amid the primal sunshine of their existence, to
suggest the thought of the soul’s incongruity with its circumstances.
They have already learned that something is to be thrown aside. The
idea of Death is in them, or not far off. But, were they to choose a
symbol for him, it would be the butterfly soaring upward, or the bright
angel beckoning them aloft, or the child asleep, with soft dreams
visible through her transparent purity.
Such a Child, in whitest marble, they have found among the monuments of
Mount Auburn.
“Sweetest Eve,” observes Adam, while hand in hand they contemplate this
beautiful object, “yonder sun has left us, and the whole world is
fading from our sight. Let us sleep as this lovely little figure is
sleeping. Our Father only knows whether what outward things we have
possessed to-day are to be snatched from us forever. But should our
earthly life be leaving us with the departing light, we need not doubt
that another morn will find us somewhere beneath the smile of God. I
feel that he has imparted the boon of existence never to be resumed.”
“And no matter where we exist,” replies Eve, “for we shall always be
together.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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