going to listen to what the Poets say. The swallows never would tell me
anything; but now I shall know as much as they know. Are you not glad for
me, O Sun?"

The Sun came over the trees, and heard and said nothing. If he had
answered at all he must have said,--

"The only time when a human soul is either wise or happy is in that one
single moment when the hour of my own shining or of the moon's beaming
seems to that single soul to be past and present and future, to be at
once the creation and the end of all things. Faust knew that; so will
you."

But the Sun shone on and held his peace. He sees all things ripen and
fall. He can wait. He knows the end. It is always the same.

He brings the fruit out of the peach-flower, and rounds it and touches it
into ruddiest rose and softest gold: but the sun knows well that the
peach must drop--whether into the basket to be eaten by kings, or on to
the turf to be eaten by ants. What matter which very much after all?

The Sun is not a cynic; he is only wise because he is Life and he is
Death, the creator and the corrupter of all things.




CHAPTER IX.