“All language dies, giving birth to other. Colour fades—paint perishes, marble crumbles, the statue falls in the grass, the glowing harmonies pass into blackness and are no more, the rains wash the hand’s craft from the hardest stone—the cathedral, the masonry of which, splendidly upspringing to the clouds, reaches towards the swinging skies, crumbles at last and falls and sinks into the gutter—is carried grain by grain in drainage of runnels to the water-brook, or by babbling brook in rounded pebbles into the sea of obliterate things. That literary works die, as all human effort dies, is a part of the pathos of the unattainable—a part of the grim tribute of Life to Death. In the life of the world, Homer is but of the day before yesterday, and he is dead except to a few scholars; even Shakespeare himself, who is but of yesterday, is read and known by how few of those who utter so glibly the fragments of his wisdom! There is no finality in literature—no end to art. The sweetest love-lyric will one day sound scholastic, pattered by lips that, for all their essaying, cannot taste its native tenderness—sounded in ears that will be deaf to some subtle accent of it—heard by alien minds that must strain by grammar and rule of thumb to catch its meaning, which the very shepherds of its living day could grasp at its mere uttering. But noble work, even though it pass away, gives birth to nobler, as the heroic act ceases at the breathing of a breath, yet lives in the remembering; and we should be content indeed to enrich and strengthen the spirit of our age.”
He sat for awhile, after her voice had ceased; and, with puckered brows, stared at the light:
“I have worked only for Fame,” he said. “I have shut out the world—turned a deaf ear to its pain and cry—toiled and striven for Fame alone. And I have won it.”
“Then you have found a pretty dry biscuit to feed your heart upon,” she said.
He nodded:
“I have awaked to find myself alone.”
There was laughing applause by the bed.
Caroline smiled sadly:
“So you have been a little lonely, eh, Paul?”
“I am finding myself more and more alone.”