Of time would ever buy. You cannot lose it
By gift or sale or prodigality
Nor any more by scorn. It is yours now,
And you must have it with you in all places,
Even as the wind must blow.
Like Job, when Jehovah spoke to him out of the heavens, Bartholow listened to the sentence placed upon him by one who had brought him light only to obscure it darkly. He listened and behold he was like a man that understands. He was quickly to know what Gabrielle in her suicide had done for him, and it was well he understood, before he learned of her, that he was free to live a life of knowledge and of sympathy with man, that he was alone, and that not even Gabrielle could build a golden house with him. Sadly he replied,
When a man’s last illusion, like a bubble,
Covered with moonshine, breaks and goes to nothing,
And after that is less than nothing,
The bubble had then better be forgotten