Then come the winds, that you cannot see, to rive its bark; and the
waters from the heavens, to soften its pores; and the rot, which all
can feel and none can understand, to humble its pride and bring it to
the ground. From that moment its beauty begins to perish. It lies
another hundred years, a mouldering log, and then a mound of moss and
'arth; a sad effigy of a human grave. This is one of your genuine
monuments, though made by a very different power than such as belongs
to your chiseling masonry! and after all, the cunningest scout of the
whole Dahcotah nation might pass his life in searching for the spot
where it fell, and be no wiser when his eyes grew dim, than when they
were first opened. As if that was not enough to convince man of his
ignorance; and as though it were put there in mockery of his conceit,
a pine shoots up from the roots of the oak, just as barrenness comes
after fertility, or as these wastes have been spread, where a garden
may have been created. Tell me not of your worlds that are old! it is
blasphemous to set bounds and seasons, in this manner, to the works of
the Almighty, like a woman counting the ages of her young.
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