At this particular place we discovered on a mound,
covered up with rank growth and rubbish, two of the most beautiful
stone doorways that it is possible to conceive. The carving
on them was simply exquisite, and I only regret that we had no
means of getting them away. No doubt they had once been the
entrances to a palace, of which, however, no traces were now
to be seen, though probably its ruins lay under the rising mound.
Gone! quite gone! the way that everything must go. Like the
nobles and the ladies who lived within their gates, these cities
have had their day, and now they are as Babylon and Nineveh,
and as London and Paris will one day be. Nothing may endure.
That is the inexorable law. Men and women, empires and cities,
thrones, principalities, and powers, mountains, rivers, and unfathomed
seas, worlds, spaces, and universes, all have their day, and
all must go. In this ruined and forgotten place the moralist
may behold a symbol of the universal destiny. For this system
of ours allows no room for standing still -- nothing can loiter
on the road and check the progress of things upwards towards
Life, or the rush of things downwards towards Death. The stern
policeman Fate moves us and them on, on, uphill and downhill
and across the level; there is no resting-place for the weary
feet, till at last the abyss swallows us, and from the shores
of the Transitory we are hurled into the sea of the Eternal.
Pages:
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43