Note 3 — Chapter VII

The writer does not recall having read this passage until a few weeks ago, yet in a volume of verse published in 1913 he included some stanzas the two last of which offer such a striking resemblance to the Biblical verses just quoted that he ventures to print them here as an example of the manner in which the imagination of men may run on similar lines, although centuries of time separate them:

THE DEAD Do ye hearken, ye dead, with your faces so nobly quiet, Do ye list to the lays that are sung, and the lusts that are said, Do ye wot of the frenzies, the fears, the desires, and the riot, Do ye hearken, ye dead? "O'er our lips and our hearts are the sods and the cerements spread, But we hearken the harps and the whispers, the songs that ye sigh at, All your manifold furies and fears do we list in our bed. "We would rise, we would rise to partake of your doom and your diet, But on lips and on eyes the worms and the vampires have fed, We can kiss, we can smile not—awaiting eternity's fiat. We hearken, we dead!"