O deep and bitter ingloriousness! ... O speechless degradation of all the higher capabilities of Man! to love one's own ephemeral Shadow-Existence so utterly as to exclude from thought and sympathy all other things whether human or divine! And was it not possible that this Spectre of Self might still be clinging to him? Was it dead with the Dream of Sah-luma? ... or had Sah-luma never truly died at all? ... and was the fine, fire-spun Essence that had formed the Spirit of the Laureate of Al-Kyris yet part of the living Substance of his present nature, ... he, a world- unrecognized English poet of the nineteenth century? Did all Sah- luma's light follies, idle passions, and careless cruelties remain inherent in him? Had he the same pride of intellect, the same vain-glory, the same indifference to God and Man? Oh, no, no! ... he shuddered at the thought! ... and his head sank lower and lower beneath the benediction touch of Her whose tenderness revived his noblest energies, and lit anew in his heart the pure, bright fire of heaven-encompassing Aspiration.
"THOU WERT SAH-LUMA!" went on the mildly earnest voice, "And all the wide, ungrudging fame given to Earth's great poets in ancient days, was thine! Thy name was on all men's mouths, ... thou wert honored by kings, ... thou wert the chief glory of a great people, ... great though misled by their own false opinions, ... and the City of Al-Kyris, of which thou wert the enshrined jewel, was mightier far than any now built upon the earth! Christ had not come to thee, save by dim types and vague prefigurements which only praying prophets could discern, ... but God had spoken to thy soul in quiet moments, and thou wouldst neither hear Him nor believe in Him! I had called thee, but thou wouldst not listen, ... thou didst foolishly prefer to hearken to the clamorous tempting of thine own beguiling human passions, and wert altogether deaf to an Angel's whisper! Things of the earth earthly gained dominion over thee ... by them thou wert led astray, deceived, and at last forsaken, ... the genius God gave thee thou didst misuse and indolently waste, ... thy brief life came, as thou hast seen, to sudden-piteous end,--and the proud City of thy dwelling was destroyed by fire! Not a trace of it was left to mark the spot where once it stood. The foundations of Babylon were laid above it, and no man guessed that it had ever been. And thy poems, ... the fruit of thy heaven-sent but carelessly accepted inspiration,--who is there that remembers them? ... No one! ... save THOU! THOU hast recovered them like sunken pearls from the profound ocean of limitless Memory, ... and to the world of To-day thou dost repeat the SELF-SAME MUSIC to which Al-Kyris listened entranced so many thousands of generations ago!"