And the sea a sapphire dish?
What a wonderful, wonderful world it is—
For haven’t you got your wish?
He liked to sing this, and he loved the hill and the evening. He lay there a long time, making little rhymes and loving everything. Next day he wandered away in the woods, and asked for food at a hut, and offered the bewildered woman a rhyme in payment, and at night he returned to his hill, and there he lived for days, playing that he was living all alone in the world—that there was not another person anywhere on the earth.
But one night when he was lying on the hillside, composing a song to the Littlest Leaf in the Wood, suddenly the voice of his song was not so loud as a voice within him which seemed to say how much he delighted to be singing. And then he knew the voice—that it was the voice of the Beauty Self in his own head, that it was that voice that had made him linger on the hillside and had commanded him to sing about the beauty in the world and to do nothing else. And all this time it had been king of the Selves, and not he!
He rose and fled down the hillside, and for days he wandered alone, sick at heart because this fair Beauty Self had tricked him into following her and no other, even as the Fun Self and the Knowledge Self had done. But even while he wandered, grieving, again and again the Idle Self, the Strong Self, the Discontented Self, deceived him for a little while and succeeded in making their own voices heard, and now and again the little shadowy Selves—the Malice and Cruel and Envy Selves drew very near him and tried to speak for him. And they all fought to keep him from being king and to deceive him into thinking that they spoke for him.
One brooding noonday, as Hazen was travelling, alone and tired, on the highroad, a carriage overtook him, and the gentleman within, looking sharply at him, ordered the carriage stopped, and asked him courteously if he was not the poet whose songs he had sometimes heard, and of whose knowledge and good-fellowship others had told him. It proved that it was no other than Hazen whom he meant, and he took him with him in his carriage to a great, wonderful house overlooking the valley, and commanding a sovereign mountain on whose very summit stood a deserted castle. It seemed as if merely looking on that wonderful prospect would help one to be wise and really good and beautiful and worthy to be loved.
At once Hazen’s host, the Gentleman of the Carriage, began showing him his treasures and all that made life for him. The house was filled with curious and beautiful things, pictures, ivories, marbles, and tapestries, and with many friends. In the evenings there were always festivities; mirth and laughter were everywhere, and Hazen was laden with gifts of these and other things, and delighted in the entertainment. But by day, in a high-ceiled library and a cool study, the two spent hours pouring over letters and science, finding out the secrets of the world, getting on the other side of words, saying sentences, and thinking thoughts that became solid; or they would wander on the hillsides and carry rare books and dream of the beauty in the world and weave little songs. Now they would be idle, now absorbed in feats of strength, and now they would descend into the town and there delight in its great sport. And in all this Hazen had some part and earned his own way, because of his cleverness and willingness to enter in the life and belong to it.
One day, standing on a balcony of the beautiful house, looking across at the mountain and the deserted castle, Hazen said aloud:—
“This is the true life. This is fortune. For now I hear all the voices of all my Selves, and I give good things to each, and I am king of them all!”