And through these glimmering
rows of the dead I walked in the dream-light; and from one to another I
went in the glory of having known and loved them; now weeping sad tears
over the loss of the beautiful; now rejoicing in the strength of the
mighty; now exulting in the love and truth which would yet dawn upon me
when I too should go down beneath the visible, and emerge in the realms of
the actual and the unseen? All the time I was sensible of a wondrous
elevation of being, a glory of life and feeling hitherto unknown to me.
I had entered the secret places of my own hidden world by the gate of
sleep, and walked about them in my dream.
Gradually I became aware that a foreign sound was mingling with the
sighing of the tree-tops overhead. It grew and grew, till I recognized the
sound of wheels--not of heavenly chariots, but of earthly motion and
business. I heard them stop at the lofty gates of my holy place, and by
twoes and threes, or in solitary singleness, came people into my garden of
the dead. And who should they be but the buried ones?--all those whose
marble busts stood in ghostly silence, within the shadows of the
everlasting pines? And they talked and laughed and jested.
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