Stone Face.
'Good evening,' said the poet. 'Can you give a traveller a night'slodging?'
'Willingly,' answered Ernest; and then he added, smiling, 'Methinks Inever saw the Great Stone Face look so hospitably at a stranger.'
The poet sat down on the bench beside him, and he and Ernest talkedtogether. Often had the poet held intercourse with the wittiest andthe wisest, but never before with a man like Ernest, whose thoughtsand feelings gushed up with such a natural feeling, and who made greattruths so familiar by his simple utterance of them. Angels, as hadbeen so often said, seemed to have wrought with him at his labor inthe fields; angels seemed to have sat with him by the fireside;and, dwelling with angels as friend with friends, he had imbibed thesublimity of their ideas, and imbued it with the sweet and lowly charmof household words. So thought the poet. And Ernest, on the other hand,was moved and agitated by the living images which the poet flung outof his mind, and which peopled all the air about the cottage-door withshapes of beauty, both gay and pensive. The sympathies of these two meninstructed them with a profounder sense than either could have attainedalone. Their minds accorded into one strain, and made delightfulmusic which neither of them could have claimed as all his own, nordistinguished his own share from the other's. They led one another, asit were, into a high pavilion of their thoughts, so remote, and hithertoso dim, that they had never entered it before, and so beautiful thatthey desired to be there always.
As Ernest listened to the poet, he imagined that the Great Stone Facewas bending forward to listen too. He gazed earnestly into the poet'sglowing eyes.
'Who are you, my strangely gifted guest?' he said.
The poet laid his finger on the volume that Ernest had been reading.
'You have read these poems,' said he. 'You know me, then--for I wrotethem.'
Again, and still more earnestly than before, Ernest examined the poet'sfeatures; then turned towards the Great Stone Face; then back, with anuncertain aspect, to his guest. But his countenance fell; he shook hishead, and sighed.
'Wherefore are you sad?' inquired the poet. 'Because,' replied Ernest,'all through life I have awaited the fulfilment of a prophecy; and, whenI read these poems, I hoped that it might be fulfilled in you.'
'You hoped,' answered the poet, faintly smiling, 'to find in me thelikeness of the Great Stone Face. And you are disappointed, as formerlywith Mr. Gathergold, and old Blood-and-Thunder, and Old Stony Phiz. Yes,Ernest, it is my doom.
You must add my name to the illustrious three, and record anotherfailure of your hopes. For--in shame and sadness do I speak it,Ernest--I am not worthy to be typified by yonder benign and majesticimage.'
'And why?' asked Ernest. He pointed to the volume. 'Are not thosethoughts divine?'
'They have a strain of the Divinity,' replied the poet. 'You can hear inthem the far-off echo of a heavenly song. But my life, dear Ernest, hasnot corresponded with my thought. I have had grand dreams, but they havebeen only dreams, because I have lived--and that, too, by my own choiceamong poor and mean realities. Sometimes, even--shall I dare to sayit?---I lack faith in the grandeur, the beauty, and the goodness, whichmy own works are said to have made more evident in nature and in humanlife. Why, then, pure seeker of the good and true, shouldst thou hope tofind me, in yonder image of the divine?'
The poet spoke sadly, and his eyes were dim with tears. So, likewise,were those of Ernest.
At the hour of sunset, as had long been his frequent custom, Ernest wasto discourse to an assemblage of the neighboring inhabitants in the openair. He and the poet, arm in arm, still talking together as they wentalong, proceeded to the spot. It was a small nook among the hills, witha gray precipice behind, the stern front of which was relieved by thepleasant foliage of many creeping plants that made a tapestry for thenaked rock, by hanging their festoons from all its rugged angles. At asmall elevation above the ground, set in a rich framework of verdure,there appeared a niche, spacious enough to admit a human figure, withfreedom for such gestures as spontaneously accompany earnest thought andgenuine emotion. Into this natural pulpit Ernest ascended, and threw alook of familiar kindness around upon his audience. They stood, or sat,or reclined upon the grass, as seemed good to each, with the departingsunshine falling obliquely over them, and mingling its subduedcheerfulness with the solemnity of a grove of ancient trees, beneath andamid the boughs of which the golden rays were constrained to pass. Inanother direction was seen the Great Stone Face, with the same cheer,combined with the same solemnity, in its benignant aspect.
Ernest began to speak, giving to the people of what was in his heartand mind. His words had power, because they accorded with his thoughts;and his thoughts had reality and depth, because they harmonized withthe life which he had always lived. It was not mere breath that thispreacher uttered; they were the words of life, because a life of gooddeeds and holy love was melted into them. Pearls, pure and rich, hadbeen dissolved into this precious draught. The poet, as he listened,felt that the being and character of Ernest were a nobler strain ofpoetry than he had ever written.
His eyes glistening with tears, he gazed reverentially at the venerableman, and said within himself that never was there an aspect so worthy ofa prophet and a sage as that mild, sweet, thoughtful countenance, withthe glory of white hair diffused about it. At a distance, but distinctlyto be seen, high up in the golden light of the setting sun, appearedthe Great Stone Face, with hoary mists around it, like the white hairsaround the brow of Ernest. Its look of grand beneficence seemed toembrace the world.
At that moment, in sympathy with a thought which he was about to utter,the face of Ernest assumed a grandeur of expression, so imbued withbenevolence, that the poet, by an irresistible impulse, threw his armsaloft and shouted--
'Behold! Behold! Ernest is himself the likeness of the Great StoneFace!'
Then all the people looked and saw that what the deep-sighted poet saidwas true. The prophecy was fulfilled. But Ernest, having finished whathe had to say, took the poet's arm, and walked slowly homeward, stillhoping that some wiser and better man than himself would by and byappear, bearing a resemblance to the GREAT STONE FACE.