The drowned sailor rests the
easier in his grave that the lines written over it bid better fortune
to others who adventure the sea. "Go thou upon thy business and obtain
thy desire,"[52] says the dead man to the passer-by, and the kind word
makes the weight of his own darkness less to bear. Amazonia of
Thessalonica from her tomb bids husband and children cease their
lamentations and be only glad while they remember her.[53] Such
recompence is in death that the dead sailor or shepherd becomes
thenceforth the genius of the shore or the hillside.[54] The sacred
sleep under earth sends forth a vague and dim effluence; in a sort of
trance between life and death the good still are good and do not
wholly cease out of being.[55]
For the doctrine of immortality did not dawn upon the world at any
single time or from any single quarter. We are accustomed, perhaps, to
think of it as though it came like sunrise out of the dark, /lux
sedentibus in tenebris/, giving a new sense to mankind and throwing
over the whole breadth of life a vivid severance of light from shadow,
putting colour and sharp form into what had till then all lain dim in
the dusk, like Virgil's woodland path under the glimpses of a fitful
moon. Rather it may be compared to those scattered lights that
watchers from Mount Ida were said to discern moving hither and thither
in the darkness, and at last slowly gathering and kindling into the
clear pallor of dawn.[56] So it is that those half-formed beliefs,
those hints and longings, still touch us with the freshness of our own
experience.
Pages:
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133