It
was a head of the Sphinx. The calm, grand face was partially averted,
so that the sorrowful eyes, almost betraying the aching secret which
the still lips kept sacred, were hidden,--only the slight, tender droop
in the corner of the mouth told what their expression might be. Around,
forever stretched the endless sands,--the mystery of life found in the
heart of death. That mournful, eternal face gave me a strange feeling
of weariness and helplessness. I felt as if I had already pressed
eagerly to the other side of the head, still only to find the voiceless
lips and mute eyes. Strange tears sprang to my eyes; I hastily brushed
them away, and, leaving the Sphinx, mounted to my garret.
But the riddle followed me. I sat down on the floor, beside a box of
books, and somewhat listlessly began pulling it over to examine the
contents. The first book I took hold of was a little worn volume of
Herodotus that had belonged to my father. I opened it; and as if it,
too, were a link in the chain of influences which I half felt was being
forged around me, it opened at the first part of "Euterpe," where
Herodotus is speculating upon the phenomena of the Nile. Twenty-two
hundred years,--I thought,--and we are still wondering, the Sphinx is
still silent, and we yet in the darkness! Alas, if this riddle be
insoluble, how can we hope to find the clue to deeper problems? If
there are places on our little earth whither our feet cannot go,
curtains that our hands cannot withdraw, how can we expect to track
paths through realms of thought,--how to voyage in those airy,
impalpable regions whose existence we are sure of only while we are
there voyaging?
"Nilus in extremum fugit perterritus orbem Occuluitque caput, quod
adhuc latet.
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