Indeed, it is a question of
life then, and not of death. We want to keep fast hold of our life, and, in
the strength of that, to look the threatening death in the face. But to my
walk that morning.
I wandered on the downs till I came to the place where a solitary rock
stands on the top of a cliff looking seaward, in the suggested shape of a
monk praying. On the base on which he knelt I seated myself, and looked out
over the Atlantic. How faded the ocean appeared! It seemed as if all the
sunny dyes of the summer had been diluted and washed with the fogs of the
coming winter, when I thought of the splendour it wore when first from
these downs I gazed on the outspread infinitude of space and colour.
"What," I said to myself at length, "has she done since then? Where is
her work visible? She has riven, and battered, and destroyed, and her
destruction too has passed away. So worketh Time and its powers! The
exultation of my youth is gone; my head is gray; my wife is growing old;
our children are pushing us from our stools; we are yielding to the new
generation; the glory for us hath departed; our life lies weary before us
like that sea; and the night cometh when we can no longer work.
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