Through the path, hedged with
leafless lilac-shrubs, just athrob with the mist of life sent up from
the roots below, I went, and crossed the church-yard fence. Winding in
and out among the graves,--for upon a heart, living and joyous, or
still and dead, I cannot step,--I took my way. "Dear old tower, I have
thee at last!" I said; for I talk to unanswering things all over the
world. In crowded streets I speak, and murmur softly to highest
heights.
But I quite forgot to tell what my tower was built like, and of what
it was made. A few miles away, a mountain, neither very large nor very
high, has met with some sad disaster that cleaved its stony shell, and
so, time out of memory, the years have stolen into its being, and
winter frosts have sadly cut it up, and all along its rocky ridges,
and thickly at its base, lie beds of shaly fragments, as various in
form and size as the autumn-leaves that November brings.
I've traced these bits of broken stone all the way from yonder
mountain hither; and that once my tower stood firm and fast in the
hill's heart, I know.
There are sides and curves, concaves and convexities, and angles of
every degree, in the stones that make up my tower. The vexing question
is, What conglomerated the mass?
No known form of cement is here, and so the simple village-people say,
"It was not built by the present race of men.
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