Here is the crying treachery; and thus it happens that there are slaves and craven hearts. This is the profound pathos of history, (for the Sphinx has always more or less of sadness in her face,) which enters so inevitably into all human triumphs. The monuments of Egypt, the palaces and tombs of her kings,—revelations of the strength of will,—also by inevitable suggestions call to our remembrance successive generations of slaves and their endless toil. Morn after morn, at sunrise, for thousands of years, did Memnon breathe forth his music, that his name might be remembered upon the earth; but his music was the swell of a broken harp, and his name was whispered in mournful silence! Among the embalmed dead, in urn-burials, in the midst of catacombs, and among the graves upon our hillsides and in our valleys, there lurks the same sad mockery. Surely "purple Death and the strong Fates do conquer us!" Strangely, in vast solitudes, comes over us a sense of desolation, when even the faintest adumbrations of life seem lost in the inertia of mortality. In all pomp lurks the pomp of funeral; and we do now and then pay homage to the grim skeleton king who sways this dusty earth,—yea, who sways our hearts of dust!
But it is only when we yield that we are conquered. "The daemon shall not choose us, but we shall choose our daemon."[7] It is only when we lose hold of our royal inheritance that Time is seen with his scythe and the heritage becomes a waste.
This is the failure, the central loss, over which Achtheia mourns. Happy are the epoptæ who know this, who have looked the Sphinx in the face, and escaped death! They are the seers, they the heroes!
But "Conx Ompax!"
And now, like good Grecians, let us make the double libation to our lady,—toward the East and toward the West. That is an important point, reader; for thus is recognized the intimate connection which our lady has with the movements of Nature, in which her life is mirrored,—especially with the rising, the ongoing, and the waning of the day; and you remember that this also was the relief of the Sphinx's riddle,—this same movement from the rising to the setting sun. But prominently, as in all worship, are our eyes turned toward the East,—toward the resurrection. In the tomb of Memnon, at Thebes, are wrought two series of paintings; in the one, through successive stages, the sun is represented in his course from the East to the West,—and in the other is represented, through various stages, his return to the Orient. It was to this Orient that the old king looked, awaiting his regeneration.
Thus, reader, in all nations,—by no mere superstition, but by a glorious symbolism of Faith,—do the children of the earth lay them down in their last sleep with their faces to the East.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] The worship of this Great Mother is not more wonderful for its antiquity in time than for its prevalence as regards space. To the Hindu she was the Lady Isani. She was the Ceres of Roman mythology, the Cybele of Phrygia and Lydia, and the Disa of the North. According to Tacitus, (Germania, c. 9,) she was worshipped by the ancient Suevi. She was worshipped by the Muscovite, and representations of her are found upon the sacred drums of the Laplanders. She swayed the ancient world, from its southeast corner in India to Scandinavia in the northwest; and everywhere she is the "Mater Dolorosa." And who is it, reader, that in the Christian world struggles for life and power under the name of the Holy Virgin, and through the sad features of the Madonna?
[3] Iliad, I. 63.
[4] Euripides.