“They do not die,” said the poet. “They only seem to die; they go on, like ideas, into the invisible world. I’d like to write a volume of adventures, the story of the adventures of, say, twelve different sparks.”
It was very white wood and very red fire. And it was slow-burning, for the resin had been washed out of all their boles. The fire glowed and glittered and was sociable and was taking time to live and taking time to die. Our eyes grew hot and staring, like children’s eyes sitting in front of the yule-logs listening to Christmas tales after their bed-time hour.
Our thoughts fly up brightly and then disappear, but goodness knows where they go to. Our fancies stream upward idly like little flaming serpents. Life is a fire, and we keep on burning and throwing up sparks. We are very pretty, if we could only see ourselves, with our thoughts and fancies jumping out of us and flying from us. The fire will burn out towards dawn, and then the sparks will cease. They’ll only be a happy memory then. But the poet believes the sparks go on.
What a silence! The river is roaring past like the river of time itself, but we have forgotten it, we have detached ourselves from it, and beside our little fire there is a silence all our own. We have a silence and a noise at the same time. There is a stillness and aloofness and a sense of no man near.
A disturbing thought comes. “If there were an earthquake in San Francisco you’d feel the tremor here. If there were an earthquake in the West the river might suddenly flow over us.” We listened, we tried to sense the sleeping world, the ball on which we were lying. How still, how peaceful it was! Not a tremor, not a quiver from beneath us! Old earth slept the perfect sleep of a child. We too could sleep that way, and presently some one spoke but the others did not reply, did not dare. One was left speaking and the other was asleep. All became still and quiet in the temple. The candles were still burning. But the priest had gone. It was night, and the Spirit reigned in serenity. And the candles were still burning.
A tiny spark was born to-day;
It said good-b’ye to yesterday.
It carried up a tiny light,
Said good-day and then good-night.