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I feel in myself the future life. I am like a forest once cut down; the new shoots are stronger and livelier than ever. I am rising, I know, toward the sky. The sunshine is on my head. The earth gives me its generous sap, but heaven lights me with reflection of unknown worlds. You say the soul is nothing but the resultant of the bodily powers. Why, then, is my soul more luminous when my bodily powers begin to fail? Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart. There I breathe at this hour the fragrance of the lilacs, the violets, and the roses as at twenty years. The nearer I approach the end, the plainer I hear around me the immortal symphonies of the worlds which invite me. It is marvelous, yet simple. It is a fairy tale, and it is history. For half a century I have been writing my thoughts in prose and in verse; history, philosophy, drama, romance, tradition, satire, ode and song -- I have tried it all. But I feel I have not said the thousandth part of what is in me. When I go down to the grave I can say, like so many others, "I have finished my day's work." But I cannot say, "I have finished my life.'' My day's work will begin again the next morning. The tomb is not a blind alley it is a thoroughfare. It closes on the twilight; it opens with the dawn. -- Victor Hugo.
By J. Wilbur Chapan, "Present Day Parables."
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