Atma - A Romance

Far retired in the woody recesses to the south of Jummoo, thither come

by a winding labyrinth of ways were the fugitives. Bertram, languid and

pale, lay on a couch of moss and leaves built by his friend. His gaze

rested on Atma with compassion, for he knew that his wound was of the

spirit, and he feared that without a balm the sore must be mortal. The

soul dies sometimes before we say of the man "he is dead," and at that

strange death we shudder lest it should know no awakening.

Atma sat near by, dumb and unheeding. His fingers toyed idly with a

Pearl, on which he gazed as if seeing other forms than those about him.

For many hours he was silent, rising at times to proffer food and water

to the wounded man, but oblivious of his own needs, and only

half-conscious that he was not alone. Daylight faded and stars came out

before he spoke, addressing none and looking away into silence:-"O swift-winged Time,

Bearing to what unknown estate,

What silent clime,

The burden of our hopes and fears,

The story of our smiles and tears,

And hapless fate?

Those vanished days,

Their golden light can none restore;

Those sovereign rays

That set o'er western seas to-night,

This tranquil moon that shines so bright,

Have paled before

Returning in their time, but, oh!

The golden light of long ago

Returns no more.

This little Pearl,

Of water born, shall year by year

Imprison in its tiny sphere

Those fleeting tints whose mystic strife

And shadowy whirl

Of colour seem a form of life;

Nor ever shall their sea-born home

Dissolve in foam;

But this frail build of love and trust

Will sink to dust."

The magnitude of his calamity had dulled the sharpness of each stroke,

and thus it was not of loss of love, faith and fortune that he spoke,

but of the frailty of life. This is our habit. A ship too richly

freighted goes down, and straightway the owner laments, not his own

deprivation, but that "all flesh is grass." "Vanity of vanities," he

cries, "all is vanity," and we but guess at his hurt. A mysterious

consciousness is wiser than his reason, and connects the broken current

of his life with a mighty movement which he knows afar, but cannot tell

whether it be of Time or Eternity. He who designed all, "did not He make

one?"

Our days are empty, how should they be otherwise in a world whose very

vanity is infinite?

"Imperial Sorrow loves her sway, or I had sooner broken your vigil, my

brother," said Bertram. "I perceive that the falsity of life appals your

spirit. It is true that the faint lustre of that tiny orb will long

survive these poor frames of ours; it is a fitting emblem of the

deathless tenant within."