Inevitable in time for man and all creation is the realisation: the husks one behind another keep shelling and peeling off.

Rama crosses to Ceylon by the giant stepping-stones; and the Ganges floats with the flowers and sacred lamps of pilgrims; Diotima teaches Socrates divine lore; Benedict plunges his midnight lust in nettles and briars; and Bruno stands prevaricating yet obstinate before his judges.

The midnight jackals scream round the village; and the feigned cry of the doe is heard as she crosses the track of the hunter pursuing her young; the chaffinch sits close in her perfect nest, and the shining leaping waters of the streams run on and on.

The great stream of history runs on.

Over the curve of the misty horizon, out of the dim past (do you not see it?) over the plains of China and the burning plains of India, by the tombs of Egypt and through the gardens beneath the white tower of Belus and under the shadow of the rock of Athens, the great stream descends:

Soft slow broad-bosomed mother-stream—where the Ark floats, and Isis in her moon-shaped boat sails on with the corpse of Osiris, and the child-god out of the water rises seated on a lotus flower, and Brahma two-sexed dwells amid the groves, and the maidens weep for Adonis.

* * * * *

Mighty long-delaying vagrant stream! Of innumerable growing rustling life! Out of some cavern mouth long ago where the cave-dwellers sat gnawing burnt bones, down to to-day—with ever growing tumult, and glints of light upon thee in the distance as of half-open eyes, and the sound of countless voices out of thee, nearer, nearer, past promontory after promontory winding, widening, hastening!

Now to-day, turbid wild and unaccountable in sudden Niagara-plunge toward thy nearer oceanic levels descending—

How wonderful art thou!