The fire shows through the screen, yellow and warm as a harvest sun. It is in its best age, and that age is ripeness.
A ripe heart!—now I know what Wordsworth meant when he said:
The good die first,
And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust
Burn to the socket!
The town clock is striking midnight. The cold of the night-wind is urging its way in at the door and window-crevice; the fire has sunk almost to the third bar of the grate. Still my dream tires not, but wraps fondly round that image—now in the far-off, chilling mists of age, growing sainted. Love has blended into reverence; passion has subsided into joyous content.
—And what if age comes, said I, in a new flush of excitation—what else proves the wine? What else gives inner strength, and knowledge, and a steady pilot-hand, to steer your boat out boldly upon that shoreless sea, where the river of life is running? Let the white ashes gather; let the silver hair lie where lay the auburn; let the eye gleam farther back, and dimmer; it is but retreating toward the pure sky-depths, an usher to the land where you will follow after.
It is quite cold, and I take away the screen altogether; there is a little glow yet, but presently the coal slips down below the third bar, with a rumbling sound—like that of coarse gravel falling into a new-dug grave.
—She is gone!
Well, the heart has burned fairly, evenly, generously, while there was mortality to kindle it; eternity will surely kindle it better.