One Enters, And From Deeps Below Deeps
Hears The Voices Of Dragomans Booming Through The Names And Titles Of
The Illustrious And Thrice-Puissant Dead.
Rock-cut steps go down into
hot, still darkness, passages-twist and are led over blind pits which,
men say, the wise builders childishly hoped would be taken for the real
tombs by thieves to come.
Up and down these alley-ways clatter all the
races of Europe with a solid backing of the United States. Their
footsteps are suddenly blunted on the floor of a hall paved with
immemorial dust that will never dance in any wind. They peer up at the
blazoned ceilings, stoop down to the minutely decorated walls, crane and
follow the sombre splendours of a cornice, draw in their breaths and
climb up again to the fierce sunshine to re-dive into the next adit on
their programme. What they think proper to say, they say aloud - and some
of it is very interesting. What they feel you can guess from a certain
haste in their movements - something between the shrinking modesty of a
man under fire and the Hadn't-we-better-be-getting-on attitude of
visitors to a mine. After all, it is not natural for man to go
underground except for business or for the last time. He is conscious of
the weight of mother-earth overhead, and when to her expectant bulk is
added the whole beaked, horned, winged, and crowned hierarchy of a lost
faith flaming at every turn of his eye, he naturally wishes to move
away.
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