Even there the wind blew dank and howling
through all the cavernous hollows. As he approached the last chamber,
out of the Devil's Window flew, with clanging wing, an arrow barbed
seagull, down to the grey veiled tumult below, and the joy of life
for a moment seized his soul. But the next, the dismay of that
which is forsaken was upon him. It was not that the once lordly
structure lay abandoned to the birds and the gusts, but that she would
never think of the place without an instant assay at forgetfulness.
He turned and reascended, feeling like a ghost that had been
wandering through the forlorn chambers of an empty skull.
When he rose on the bare top of the ruin, a heavy shower from the
sea was beating slant against the worn walls and gaping clefts.
Myriads of such rains had, with age long inevitableness, crumbled
away the strong fortress till its threatful mass had sunk to an abject
heap. Thus all devouring Death--nay, nay! it is all sheltering,
all restoring mother Nature, receiving again into her mighty matrix
the stuff worn out in the fashioning toil of her wasteful, greedy,
and slatternly children. In her genial bosom, the exhausted gathers
life, the effete becomes generant, the disintegrate returns to
resting and capable form. The rolling oscillating globe dips it
for an aeon in growing sea, lifts it from the sinking waters of its
thousand year bath to the furnace of the sun, remodels and remoulds,
turns ashes into flowers, and divides mephitis into diamonds and
breath.
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