Its pale,
vague lips seem to tremble with a terrible question, "Is this the End?"
they say,--"nothing beyond?--no more?"
Why, you tell me you have seen that look in the eyes of dumb
brutes,--horses dying under the lash. I know.
The deep of the night is passing while I write. The gas-light wakens
from the shadows here and there the objects which lie scattered through
the room: only faintly, though; for they belong to the open sunlight. As
I glance at them, they each recall some task or pleasure of the coming
day. A half-moulded child's head; Aphrodite; a bough of forest-leaves;
music; work; homely fragments, in which lie the secrets of all eternal
truth and beauty. Prophetic all! Only this dumb, woful face seems to
belong to and end with the night. I turn to look at it Has the power of
its desperate need commanded the darkness away? While the room is yet
steeped in heavy shadow, a cool, gray light suddenly touches its head
like a blessing hand, and its groping arm points through the broken
cloud to the far East, where, in the nickering, nebulous crimson, God
has set the promise of the Dawn.
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