They are living on now, and touching
our hearts. Their mute lips open other eloquent mouths to speak for
them. Hawthorne and Byron tell us what the Faun's soul, what the
Gladiator's soul, look from the white marbles to us, and the world daily
repeats the story the Antinous whispers in his bent, beautiful head, the
vanitas vanitatum that our own hearts whisper, when we drop earnest life
for voluptuous pleasures.
The Faun may smile, although life is only one long play-day in green
fields and woods, because he is a Faun. The man must sigh, when he has
drained his wine-cups and laughed his heartiest laugh, and wakes to
another morning, because he is a man. The cry of humanity echoes in our
souls. We cannot stifle it; we may hush it, and follow our idle joys,
but the day comes when we bend our head with Antinous and Solomon and
the rest of them, and sigh out our vanitas, vanitas also, in the great
weary chorus.
No need, alas! for a Hawthorne, or Byron, or even a Shakspeare to
interpret what the Antinous says for us.
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