Diogenes of London (collection)/The Lotos Shore
THE LOTOS SHORE
FAR lovelier than the vale in Ida reaches this valley dreamfully towards the sea. Inland above the lesser heights rise the purple mountains faint and mystical through the gauze of dawn, barriers of the great outer world, spectral sentinels upon the peace and resignation of this nether ravine. Closed upon all sides from the vagrant foot of man, the long and gentle slope stretches through mead and woodland to the grey sands upon the shore. Day passeth after day, and night giveth place to night, but in this silent land naught moves or changes, all is eternally immutable. For day and night have we none, but one great dreamtide beneath the sun or in the shadows of the darkness. Between us and God's troubled creatures that serve Him hour by hour most dolorously yawns the wide chasm of forgetfulness. At the gate of our refuge the soul must take its farewell of sorrow, of thought, of labour, of ecstasy, of pain; for here, one and determinate, is contentment—soft, sleeping, still and changeless beatitude. Away beyond the seas, beyond the mountains, hearts burn and wither at destiny, faint and re-arise in the sorry fabric of life; with us still lie the rebel humours, soft runs the placid blood, gently sinks the weary mortal upon a divine apathy. At this sweet low level do our lives pass smoothly in a quiet sleep of dreams and moving fancies. The air is tranquil and serene; from the odorous groves the birds call musically, drooping slowly into silence; all things, grown drowsy with ease, fall mute and cease; full is the peace that breathes o'er the shore of this our Lotos Land.
At the first breath of dawn in the wide heaven above us tree murmurs to tree in the woodland, bird calleth to bird in the close thickets, flower noddeth to flower upon the meadows, and the light creeps up the fells and sets the tiny brooks alight; the hill-slants soften to the East and the white peaks of the mountains take the sun. Sleep shakes his wings free of us as the day-star quivers overhead, and the quiet visions of the night pass from the kindly darkness and look out upon the new day through our lustrous eyes. There is no waking to the sombre laws that once set us limits in the world; there is no border 'twixt our dreams and our life: on flows the level tide through waking and through sleeping, through light and shadow, day by day and night by night. Of old-time phantom monsters, grisly fears, and ghostly thoughts were for our nightly portion. Of what be they dreaming in the fevered world this dawn, ere eyes shall open upon hideous life? Where now be those awful memories on our Lotos Shore? Night hath fared forth from us, the morning is at hand, and we awaken with dear smiles to go dreaming anew down the long and perfect day. From dawn till noon, from noon till nightfall, at the back end of the long shore the sea washes languorously about the hollow cliffs and open strand, cooing her whispers in our drowsy ears. Listen to the voices in the lazy surf rolling in low cadences upon the yellow beach! So stilly, so subtly, gather in our hearts the sounds of this silent valley that they appear faint echoes from a distant world: a world of phantasms, a world of shadows, a world of immaterial and exquisite music. Dead is all here to the jargon of distressing passions; voiceless and vain they cry to us for fellowship, thin jaded wraiths of another sphere gibbering across the waste of waters—unheard, unheeded, dimly seen through misty veils. Eyes open gently and look forth their content, lips sigh their pleasure to the zephyrs. There is neither death nor life within this place of seclusion; there is but peace that leadeth kindly to the end. Mortality hath here its final home, a lodging against the darkness. What soul can travail in this resting-place, what poor spirit falter at its imminent extinction? All, all is slumbrous peace; the bonds of the troubled flesh are broken, the tired spirit lulls and is mute, for this hush that broodeth continuously is death in life, and death is the precious goal of our dim, languid thoughts. Here at least we have an end of pain and jealous joy, here we have put oft the body, the weariful disguise of an aspiring soul. The yellow lotos on the meads hath overmastered God's secrets and come between us and our humanity. No longer are we of the race of men; they loom in our eyes as strange and unknown creatures in a strange and unknown hell. The cares of them, far off, remote and inaccessible, peer at us through the mists of oblivion—forlorn, desperate, unintelligible shapes, mad, haggard-eyed, lean, miserable ghosts. In the still noontide and the stiller evening we watch them in our visions flitting, a myriad host, about the emmets of Time's continent—things such as once we were. And in them cry the voices of our past and woful lives, reaching us yet in echoes—still, sweet, melancholy echoes, the phantoms of a troubled memory turned to a soothing pleasure by the benign device of distance. Thus weareth the afternoon to its close.
And when the westering sun slips over the hills and the shadows fall upon the sky, our hearts are still undarkened, basking in the clear sunshine of repose. The reaches of the valley abide in a dead calm, and the songs of bird and stream and tree hush in the dusk. Then in the twilight rises a soft voice calling us through the deepening shadows, as the allurement of a delicate love, the mirage of that earthly Desire we once held so sweet a recompence for all the pangs of living. It calls and calls across the meadows and through the thickets, summoning to rest. Here with the unvexing spirits of our long-dead desires is rest, sweet rest. And the lid of day closes over the dale, and night falls upon us clothed in our sufficient happiness. Through the darkness, the great darkness, comes no thought of care or joy, but the dewy blessing of immeasurable forgetfulness descends upon all; and life hushes but a little deeper, for here all life is but a hush. The sea washes on the beach to our listless ears, the fragrance of the ranker dells steals into our senses; we have made Time our thrall, and there is neither yesterday nor to-morrow, but merely Now. Thus rid of Time, ours is full immortality: though hour by hour and day by day we draw nearer to the waters whereon old Charon's boat floats idly waiting for the signal of a greater rest.