“Where now is he, the strange human one, he of the long thoughts and the brief shadow?”
“He thought he was immortal; to him everything else on the earth perished but he was immortal. Where is he now?”
“Once when he was very proud he said that he had a Creator who made him to lie down in green pastures.”
“He lies in white pastures. All the millions of his race lie in white pastures, not green pastures.”
“Our fathers, the evergreens, came forth on the earth countless ages before he appeared; and we are still here untold ages since he disappeared—leaving not a trace of himself behind.”
“The most fragile of the mosses was born before he was born and it outlasted him.”
“The frailest fern was not so perishable.”
“Yet he believed that he should have eternal youth.”
“That his race would return to some Power who had sent it forth.”
“That he was ever being borne onward to some far off divine event where there was justice.”