But there are moments
when a great horror comes upon some men's minds, and a vision of a
lonely and childless old age rises before them in the gloom of a
dreary twilight, or when the mists of autumn hide the sunbeams, and
they think, "If desolation were to come upon our homes, where could
we hide the stricken head and broken heart?" To that question--a
morbid question if you will--I have never found an answer. The answer
was possible once, but it was in an age which has passed away.
Yes, that age has passed away for ever. History repeats itself, it is
true, but history will not bear mimicry. In every melody that wakes
the echoes there is repetition of this note and that, the same single
sound is heard again and again; but the glorious intertwinings of the
several parts, the subtle fugues and merry peals of laughter that
"flash along the chords and go," the wail of the minor, as if crying
for the theme that has vanished and yet will reappear--"like armies
whispering where great echoes be"--these things are not mere
repetition; they are messages from the Eternal Father to the sons of
men, reminding them that the world moves on. Merely to ape the past,
and to attempt to reproduce in the nineteenth century the tree that
had taken a millennium to grow into its maturity in the thirteenth
and was rudely cut down root and branch in the sixteenth, is about as
wise as it would be to try and make us sing the Hallelujah Chorus in
unison! Let the dead bury their dead.
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