They Seem To Be Begging For A Merciful
Surcease, As If They Were Tired Of This Endless Gala Colouring At Each
Setting Of The Sun, Which Mocks Them With Its Eternity.
All this is now a long way behind me; but the air is so limpid, the
outlines remain so
Clear that the illusion is rather that the temples
and the pylons grow smaller, lower themselves and sink into the earth.
The white giant who follows me always with his sightless stare is now
reduced to the proportions of a simple human dreamer. His attitude
moreover has not the rigid hieratic aspect of the other Theban
statues. With his hands upon his knees he looks like a mere ordinary
mortal who had stopped to reflect.[*] I have known him for many days -
for many days and many nights, for, what with his whiteness and the
transparency of these Egyptian nights, I have seen him often outlined
in the distance under the dim light of the stars - a great phantom in
his contemplative pose. And I feel myself obsessed now by the
continuance of his attitude at this entrance of the ruins - I who shall
pass without a morrow from Thebes and even from the earth - even as we
all pass. Before conscious life was vouchsafed to me he was there, had
been there since times which make you shudder to think upon. For three
and thirty centuries, or thereabouts, the eyes of myriads of unknown
men and women, who have gone before me, saw him just as I see him now,
tranquil and white, in this same place, seated before this same
threshold, with his head a little bent, and his pervading air of
thought.
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