Look about you, man; where are the
multitudes that once peopled these prairies; the kings and the
palaces; the riches and the mightinesses of this desert?"
"Where are the monuments that would prove the truth of so vague a
theory?"
"I know not what you call a monument."
"The works of man! The glories of Thebes and Balbec--columns,
catacombs, and pyramids! standing amid the sands of the East, like
wrecks on a rocky shore, to testify to the storms of ages!"
"They are gone. Time has lasted too long for them. For why? Time was
made by the Lord, and they were made by man. This very spot of reeds
and grass, on which you now sit, may once have been the garden of some
mighty king. It is the fate of all things to ripen, and then to decay.
The tree blossoms, and bears its fruit, which falls, rots, withers,
and even the seed is lost! Go, count the rings of the oak and of the
sycamore; they lie in circles, one about another, until the eye is
blinded in striving to make out their numbers; and yet a full change
of the seasons comes round while the stem is winding one of these
little lines about itself, like the buffaloe changing his coat, or the
buck his horns; and what does it all amount to? There does the noble
tree fill its place in the forest, loftier, and grander, and richer,
and more difficult to imitate, than any of your pitiful pillars, for a
thousand years, until the time which the Lord hath given it is full.
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