“Gods of my prayers! Gods of my sacrifice! because Ye have forgotten the sacred places of my childhood, and they have therefore ceased to be, yet may I not forget. Because Ye have done this thing, Ye shall see cold altars and shall lack both my fear and praise. I shall not wince at Your lightnings, nor be awed when Ye go by.”
Then looking seawards I stood and cursed the gods, and at this moment there came to me one in the garb of a poet, who said:—
“Curse not the gods.”
And I said to him:
“Wherefore should I not curse Those that have stolen my sacred places in the night, and trodden down the gardens of my childhood?”
And he said “Come, and I will show thee.” And I followed him to where two camels stood with their faces towards the desert. And we set out and I travelled with him for a great space, he speaking never a word, and so we came at last to a waste valley hid in the desert’s midst. And herein, like fallen moons, I saw vast ribs that stood up white out of the sand, higher than the hills of the desert. And here and there lay the enormous shapes of skulls like the white marble domes of palaces built for tyrannous kings a long while since by armies of driven slaves. Also there lay in the desert other bones, the bones of vast legs and arms, against which the desert, like a besieging sea, ever advanced and already had half drowned. And as I gazed in wonder at these colossal things the poet said to me:
“The gods are dead.”
And I gazed long in silence, and I said:
“These fingers, that are now so dead and so very white and still, tore once the flowers in gardens of my youth.”
But my companion said to me: