"No, indeed," said Fidu, in his best dog language, "but you were gone so long that I caught a nice wild boar so that there is pork in the beans."
"Don't you know, Fidu," admonished Gud, "that I disapprove of eating pork?"
"But," said Fidu, "this was a vegetarian pig, for he was rooting for peanuts when I caught him."
Chapter LXIV
There are figures in the shadow but the shadow hides the faces,
And their silence is a subject that must flagellate the flesh.
There are hands and arms that touch you with their lingering embraces
Like the petals of clipped flowers still miraculously fresh.
There are voices through the darkness 'round which darkness swiftly
closes;
Remembered words and phrases that are only lost in death,
Heard within some misted twilight in a garden filled with roses
As though our own youth whispered with its awed and hollow breath.
There is nothing in the shadow that will satisfy our quest,
For each shore that's undiscovered has been lined with molding wrecks,
And if we should burst on Beauty with her healing hands of rest
Life would bind us down in duty to some slavery of sex.
There is something quite sardonic in the race's old ideals,
And the struggle for their gaining is derisive as a jest....
He who prays unto his Godhead will be wiped out as he kneels,
While the wonders of decay will destroy all the rest.
We are grinding in the shadow for the glory of the ages,
Though no hope of immortality has ever come to stay;
Yet each human soul is fretting at the bars of separate cages
Hearing rhythms of tomorrow in the discords of today.