And again the tongues of flame Start exulting and exclaim,-- "These are prophets, bards, and seers; In the horoscope of nations, Like ascendant constellations, They control the coming years."
But the night-wind cries,--"Despair! Those who walk with feet of air Leave no long-enduring marks; At God's forges incandescent Mighty hammers beat incessant, These are but the flying sparks.
"Dust are all the hands that wrought; Books are sepulchres of thought; The dead laurels of the dead Rustle for a moment only, Like the withered leaves in lonely Church-yards at some passing tread."
Suddenly the flame sinks down; Sink the rumors of renown; And alone the night-wind drear Clamors louder, wilder, vaguer,-- "'T is the brand of Meleager Dying on the hearth-stone here!"
And I answer,--"Though it be, Why should that discomfort me? No endeavor is in vain; Its reward is in the doing, And the rapture of pursuing Is the prize the vanquished gain?"
"Pushed off from one shore, and not yet landed on the other." _Russian Proverb._
The railroad from Moscow to Nijni-Novgorod had been opened but a fortnight before. It was scarcely finished, indeed; for, in order to facilitate travel during the continuance of the Great Fair at the latter place, the gaps in the line, left by unbuilt bridges, were filled up with temporary trestle-work. The one daily express-train was so thronged that it required much exertion, and the freest use of the envoy's prestige, to secure a private carriage for our party. The sun was sinking over the low, hazy ridge of the Sparrow Hills as we left Moscow; and we enjoyed one more glimpse of the inexhaustible splendor of the city's thousand golden domes and pinnacles, softened by luminous smoke and transfigured dust, before the dark woods of fir intervened, and the twilight sank down on cold and lonely landscapes.
Thence, until darkness, there was nothing more to claim attention. Whoever has seen one landscape of Central Russia is familiar with three fourths of the whole region. Nowhere else--not even on the levels of Illinois--are the same features so constantly reproduced. One long, low swell of earth succeeds to another; it is rare that any other woods than birch and fir are seen; the cleared land presents a continuous succession of pasture, rye, wheat, potatoes, and cabbages; and the villages are as like as peas, in their huts of unpainted logs, clustering around a white church with five green domes. It is a monotony which nothing but the richest culture can prevent from becoming tiresome. Culture is to Nature what good manners are to man, rendering poverty of character endurable.