Lilith

Lilith
to grow dark. At my feet lay a carpet of softest, greenest moss, couch for a king: I threw myself upon it, and
weariness at once began to ebb, for, the moment my head was down, the third time I heard below me many
waters, playing broken airs and ethereal harmonies with the stones of their buried channels. Loveliest chaos
of music−stuff the harp aquarian kept sending up to my ears! What might not a Händel have done with that
ever−recurring gurgle and bell−like drip, to the mingling and mutually destructive melodies their common
refrain!
As I lay listening, my eyes went wandering up and down the rocky slope abrupt above me, reading on its face
the record that down there, ages ago, rushed a cataract, filling the channels that had led me to its foot. My
heart swelled at the thought of the splendid tumult, where the waves danced revelling in helpless fall, to mass
their music in one organ−roar below. But soon the hidden brooks lulled me to sleep, and their lullabies
mingled with my dreams.
I woke before the sun, and eagerly climbed to see what lay beyond. Alas, nothing but a desert of finest sand!
Not a trace was left of the river that had plunged adown the rocks! The powdery drift had filled its course to
the level of the dreary expanse! As I looked back I saw that the river had divided into two branches as it fell,
that whose bank I had now followed to the foot of the rocky scaur, and that which first I crossed to the Evil
Wood. The wood I descried between the two on the far horizon. Before me and to the left, the desert stretched
beyond my vision, but far to the right I could see a lift in the sky−line, giving hope of the forest to which my
hostess had directed me.
I sat down, and sought in my pocket the half−loaf I had brought with me−−then first to understand what my
hostess had meant concerning it. Verily the bread was not for the morrow: it had shrunk and hardened to a
stone! I threw it away, and set out again.
About noon I came to a few tamarisk and juniper trees, and then to a few stunted firs. As I went on, closer
thickets and larger firs met me, and at length I was in just such a forest of pines and other trees as that in
which the Little Ones found their babies, and believed I had returned upon a farther portion of the same. But
what mattered WHERE while EVERYWHERE was the same as NOWHERE! I had not yet, by doing
something in it, made ANYWHERE into a place! I was not yet alive; I was only dreaming I lived! I was but a
consciousness with an outlook! Truly I had been nothing else in the world I had left, but now I knew the fact!
I said to myself that if in this forest I should catch the faint gleam of the mirror, I would turn far aside lest it
should entrap me unawares, and give me back to my old existence: here I might learn to be something by
doing something! I could not endure the thought of going back, with so many beginnings and not an end
achieved. The Little Ones would meet what fate was appointed them; the awful witch I should never meet;
the dead would ripen and arise without me; I should but wake to know that I had dreamed, and that all my
going was nowhither! I would rather go on and on than come to such a close!
I went deeper into the wood: I was weary, and would rest in it.
The trees were now large, and stood in regular, almost geometric, fashion, with roomy spaces between. There
was little undergrowth, and I could see a long way in every direction. The forest was like a great church,
solemn and silent and empty, for I met nothing on two feet or four that day. Now and then, it is true, some
swift thing, and again some slow thing, would cross the space on which my eye happened that moment to
settle; but it was always at some distance, and only enhanced the sense of wideness and vacancy. I heard a
few birds, and saw plenty of butterflies, some of marvellously gorgeous colouring and combinations of
colour, some of a pure and dazzling whiteness.
Coming to a spot where the pines stood farther apart and gave room for flowering shrubs, and hoping it a sign
of some dwelling near, I took the direction where yet more and more roses grew, for I was hungry after the
voice and face of my kind−−after any live soul, indeed, human or not, which I might in some measure
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