The Judgment House
NOTE
Except where references to characters well-known to all the
world occur in these pages, this book does not present a picture of public or
private individuals living or dead. It is not in any sense a historical novel.
It is in conception and portraiture a work of the imagination.
"Strangers come to the outer wall—
(Why do the sleepers
stir?)
Strangers enter the Judgment House—
(Why do the sleepers
sigh?)
Slow they rise in their judgment seats,
Sieve and measure the naked
souls,
Then with a blessing return to sleep.
(Quiet the Judgment
House.)
Lone and sick are the vagrant souls—
(When shall the world come
home?)"
"Let them fight it out, friend! things have gone too far,
God
must judge the couple: leave them as they are—
Whichever one's the guiltless,
to his glory,
And whichever one the guilt's with, to my story!
"Once more. Will the wronger, at this last of all,
Dare to say,
'I did wrong,' rising in his fall?
No? Let go, then! Both the fighters to
their places!
While I count three, step you back as many paces!"
"And the Sibyl, you know. I saw her with my own eyes at
Cumae,
hanging in a jar; and when the boys asked her, 'What
would you, Sibyl?' she
answered, 'I would die.'"
"So is Pheidippides happy for ever,—the noble strong man
Who
would race like a God, bear the face of a God, whom a
God loved so
well:
He saw the land saved he had helped to save, and was suffered to
tell
Such tidings, yet never decline, but, gloriously as he began
So to
end gloriously—once to shout, thereafter to be mute:
'Athens is saved!'
Pheidippides dies in the shout for his meed."
"Oh, never star
Was lost here, but it rose
afar."