Then it was that I wrote VOCES FIDELIUM, a series of
dramatic monologues in verse; then that I indited the bulk of a
covenanting novel - like so many others, never finished. Late I
sat into the night, toiling (as I thought) under the very dart of
death, toiling to leave a memory behind me. I feel moved to thrust
aside the curtain of the years, to hail that poor feverish idiot,
to bid him go to bed and clap VOCES FIDELIUM on the fire before he
goes; so clear does he appear before me, sitting there between his
candles in the rose-scented room and the late night; so ridiculous
a picture (to my elderly wisdom) does the fool present! But he was
driven to his bed at last without miraculous intervention; and the
manner of his driving sets the last touch upon this eminently
youthful business. The weather was then so warm that I must keep
the windows open; the night without was populous with moths. As
the late darkness deepened, my literary tapers beaconed forth more
brightly; thicker and thicker came the dusty night-fliers, to
gyrate for one brilliant instant round the flame and fall in
agonies upon my paper. Flesh and blood could not endure the
spectacle; to capture immortality was doubtless a noble enterprise,
but not to capture it at such a cost of suffering; and out would go
the candles, and off would I go to bed in the darkness raging to
think that the blow might fall on the morrow, and there was VOCES
FIDELIUM still incomplete.
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