Fantastics and other Fancies/The Night of All Saints
THE NIGHT OF ALL SAINTS[1]
The Night of All Saints—a night clear and deep and filled with a glory of white moonlight.
And a low sweet Wind came up from the West, and wandered among the tombs, whispering to the Shadows.
And there were flowers among the tombs.
They looked into the face of the moon, and from them a thousand invisible perfumes arose into the night.
And the Wind blew upon the flowers until their soft eyelids began to close and their perfume grew fainter in the moonlight. And the Wind sought in vain to arouse them from the dreamless sleep into which they were sinking.
For the perfume of a flower is but the presence of its invisible soul; and the flowers drooped in the moonlight, and at the twelfth hour they closed their eyes forever and the incense of their lives passed away from them.
Then the Wind mourned awhile among the old white tombs; and whispered to the cypress trees and to the Shadows, "Were not these offerings?"
And the Shadows and the cypresses bowed weirdly in mysterious reply. But the Wind asked, To Whom? And the Shadows kept silence with the cypresses.
Then the Wind entered like a ghost into the crannies of the white sepulchres, and whispered in the darkness, and coming forth shuddered and mourned.
And the Shadows shuddered also; and the cypresses sighed in the night.
"It is a mystery," sobbed the Wind, "and passeth my understanding. Wherefore these offerings to those who dwell in the darkness where even dreams are dead?"
But the trees and the Shadows answered not and the hollow tombs uttered no voice.
Then came a Wind out of the South,murmuring to the orange groves, and lifting the long tresses of the palms with the breath of his wings, and bearing back to the ancient place of tombs the souls of a thousand flowers. And the Wind of the South whispered to the souls of the flowers, "Answer, little spirits, answer my mourning brother."
And the flower-souls answered, making fragrant all the white streets of the white city of the dead:—
"We are the offerings of love bereaved to the All-loving,—the sacrifices of the fatherless to the All-father. We know not of the dead,—the Infinite secret hath not been revealed to us; —we know only that they sleep under the eye of Him who never sleeps. Thou hast seen the flowers die; but their perfumes live in the wings of the winds and sweeten all God's world. Is it not so with that fragrance of good deeds, which liveth after the deed hath been done,—or the memories of dead loves which soften the hearts of the living?"
And the cypresses together with the Shadows bowed answeringly; and the West Wind, ceasing to mourn, spread his gauzy wings in flight toward the rising of the sun.
The moon, sinking, made longer the long shadows; the South Wind caressed the cypresses, and, bearing with him ghosts of the flowers, rose in flight toward the dying fires of the stars.
- ↑ Item, November 1, 1879. Hearn's own title.