" And
as he named these things, it was like a king numbering his people.
"But your slender knives went click, click! upon the oaken staves,
and, all else being silent, the sound shook the angels with anger. O,
little roots, nipped by the winter, who do not awake although the
summer pass above you with innumerable feet. O, men who have no part
in love, who have no part in song, who have no part in wisdom, but
dwell with the shadows of memory where the feet of angels cannot
touch you as they pass over your heads, where the hair of demons
cannot sweep about you as they pass under your feet, I lay upon you a
curse, and change you to an example for ever and ever; you shall
become grey herons and stand pondering in grey pools and flit over
the world in that hour when it is most full of sighs, having
forgotten the flame of the stars and not yet found the flame of the
sun; and you shall preach to the other herons until they also are
like you, and are an example for ever and ever; and your deaths shall
come to you by chance and unforeseen, that no fire of certainty may
visit your hearts."'
The voice of the old man of learning became still, but the voteen
bent over his gun with his eyes upon the ground, trying in vain to
understand something of this tale; and he had so bent, it may be for
a long time, had not a tug at his rosary made him start out of his
dream.
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