The Broad Highway

Round about me, in the dark, were imps that laughed and whispered

together, and mocked me amid the leaves: "Who is the madman that stands upon a lonely hill at midnight,

bareheaded, half clad, and hungers for the storm? Peter Vibart!

Peter Vibart! Who is he that, having eyes, sees not, and having

ears, hears not? Peter Vibart! Peter Vibart! Blow, Wind, and

buffet him! Flame, O Lightning, that he may see! Roar, O

Thunder, that he may hear and know!"

Upon the stillness came a rustling, loud and ever louder, drowning

all else, for the giant was awake at last, and stretching himself;

and now, up he sprang with a sudden bellow, and, gathering himself

together, swept up towards me through the swaying treetops,

pelting me with broken twigs and flying leaves, and filling the

air with the tumult of his coming.

Oh, the wind!--the bellowing, giant wind! On he came, exulting,

whistling through my hair, stopping my breath, roaring in my ears

his savage, wild halloo! And, as if in answer, forth from the

inky heaven burst a jagged, blinding flame, that zigzagged down

among the tossing trees, and vanished with a roaring thunder-clap

that seemed to stun all things to silence. But not for long, for

in the darkness came the wind again--fiercer, wilder than before,

shrieking a defiance. The thunder crashed above me, and the

lightning quivered in the air about me, till my eyes ached with

the swift transitions from pitch darkness to dazzling light--light

in which distant objects started out clear and well defined, only

to be lost again in a swirl of blackness. And now came rain--a

sudden, hissing downpour, long threads of scintillating fire where

the lightning caught it--rain that wetted me through and through.

The storm was at its height, and, as I listened, rain and wind

and thunder became merged and blended into awful music--a

symphony of Life and Death played by the hands of God; and I was

an atom--a grain of dust an insect, to be crushed by God's little

finger. And yet needs must this insect still think upon its

little self for half drowned, deafened, blind, and half stunned

though I was, still the voice within me cried: "Why? Why? Why?"

Why was I here instead of lying soft and sheltered, and sleeping

the blessed sleep of tired humanity? Why was I here, with death

about me--and why must I think, and think, and think of Her?

The whole breadth of heaven seemed torn asunder--blue flame

crackled in the air; it ran hissing along the ground; then

--blackness, and a thunderclap that shook the very hill beneath

me, and I was down upon my knees, with the swish of the rain

about me.