As you wander on, poor exiles, your very gratitude is half disdain! When they lead you into cities without castles or temples, where trade and commerce rule; among whitewashed houses where the spirit of Beauty is not, and the green window-shutters are the sole adornment—murmur ye: The Dead!
On the shores of the seas when you dwell with Jews, Armenians, and Greeks, quarrelling forever over their vile profits; seeing not the heavens, nor hearing the thunder as it booms over the waves—murmur ye: The Dead!
When women in rich attire move around you, and you feel that the faint fluttering of the silken robe is far more spiritual than the life-breath of their souls—murmur ye: The Dead!
Float on, then, like the sacred whispers from the unhewn forests! The world will not know you, because you are of the race sprung from coffins; born and cradled in coffins; but as you rise from the grave, strew upon the ground beneath your feet the mouldering rags of your shrouds—and he, seated on the verge of the abyss, on the steep and slippery declivity; he, robed in the royal purple of power, will not survive your Resurrection—but must himself descend into the coffin!
I saw imaged before me, as in a wondrous vision, the varied scenes and changes as it were of a long life—rising, progressing, and vanishing, as if bound in a single day, beginning with the morning and fleeting away with the evening shadows.