Silent Ones

“ And as fields of wheat are bent and fall beneath the wind, they fell. No longer dead-alive, now all of the blessed dead, freed from their dreadful slavery!
Abruptly from the sparkling mists the cloud of eyes were gone. Faintly revealed in them were only the heads of the Silent Ones. And they drew before us; were before us! No flames now in their ebon eyes—for the flickering fires were quenched in great tears, streaming down the marble white faces. ”

“ Lugur would burn all bridges behind him; destroying all. But not so Yolara. And Von Hetzdorp would not, because he would keep what is here for Germany, and in his heart, too, he laughs at the Silent Ones and he schemes to—smadre—smash all these people. Yet has he played upon Lugur by promising him that his own people will cast aside their rulers and will muster to Lugur and that Lugur as a new ruler of Germany and the Shining Devil as Earth God, shall rule all the world for Thanaroa. And under his whisperings Lugur begins to forget even Thanaroa! ”

“ The German questioned much, but Lugur sent for more drink and grew merrier and threatened him, and the German was silent through fear. Thereafter I listened when I could, and little more I learned, but that little enough. Ja! Lugur is hot for conquest; so Yolara and so the council. They tire of it here, and the Silent Ones make their minds, not too easy, no, even though they jeer at them! And this they plan—to rule our world with their Shining Devil that Lugur says has grown strong enough to fare forth. ”

“ Even Lugur's face was gray; the priestess's eyes stark wide; in Von Hetzdorp's I saw ungrudging admiration.
"And when you hear that, Yolara," thus O'Keefe, "know that my spirit is near, and think well before you send your hidden ones, or come yourself."
No answer made the priestess to him.
She turned to the white-faced nobles.
"What Lakla has said, the council must consider, and at once," said she. "Now, friends of mine, and friends of Lugur, must all feud, all rancor, between us end." She glanced swiftly at Lugur. "The ladala—the common people—are stirring, and the Silent Ones threaten. ”

“ And again she laughed, and again Lugur and all the fair-haired joined in her laughter.
Into the eyes of Lakla I saw creep a doubt, a wavering; as though deep within her the foundations of her own belief were none too firm.
She hesitated, turning upon O'Keefe eyes in which rested more than suggestion of appeal! And Yolara saw, too, for she flashed with triumph, stretched a finger toward the handmaiden.
"Look!" she cried. "Look! Why, even she does not believe!" Her voice grew silk of silver—merciless, cruel. "Now am I minded to send another answer to the Silent Ones. Yea! ”

“ But now Von Hetzdorp has told Lugur of the passage through which we came, and Lugur and he now plan to open that.
"The ladala they will almost utterly destroy before they go, except the soldiers and the dream makers. They talk of 'sealing' the Silent Ones within their Crimson Sea, but—and this is point of trouble—they fear that if they do it they may pull down all this place they call Muria. Those who speak against it say—'The Silent Ones can have no power on earth, never have they had it. And it may be that we shall not do well under the sun ”

“ Silence, what a world it covers,—what busy schemes, what bright hopes and dark fears, what ambition, or what despair! Do you ever see a man in any society sitting mute for hours, and not feel an uneasy curiosity to penetrate the wall he thus builds up between others and himself? Does he not interest you far more than the brilliant talker at your left, the airy wit at your right whose shafts fall in vain on the sullen barrier of the silent man! ”

“ The world-wide soul wrapt up in its thoughts, in its sorrows;—what could paradings, and ribbons in the hat, do for it?
Ah yes, I will say again: The great silent men! Looking round on the noisy inanity of the world, words with little meaning, actions with little worth, one loves to reflect on the great Empire of Silence. The noble silent men, scattered here and there, each in his department; silently thinking, silently working; whom no Morning Newspaper makes mention of! They are the salt of the Earth. A country that has none or few of these is in a bad way. Like a forest which had no roots ”

“ Night cannot hide them from us.
In the dark, again,
We see the Silent People
Who once were men.
The Silent People of No Man's Land,
They rise, they rise,
With the glory of utter loss
In their stary eyes. ”

“ But the "skeletons" of our own character—they are the ones which no cupboard can hold, nor any key lock in. Some time, sooner or later, out they will come to do a jazz in front of the whole world. The life we lead in the secret chambers of our own hearts we shall one day enact on the house-roof. ”

“ When these gentry hold forth, by the hour, about their convictions and their theories, their beliefs and disbeliefs, their likings and dislikings, their tastes and their principles, their souls, their minds, and their bodies—if, in despair, you at last, by way of a change, turn the conversation towards some one else, they become loftily silent. ”

“ In the odd silence that followed we looked at each other in something like alarm, for the populace was silent, too, and a silent populace may so easily be a dangerous one. In a moment, though, they all began shouting, in cumulative waves of noise, louder and more frantically. ”

“ They must be silent because they stand in some contradictory relation to the character in which the person has clothed himself; and if they, the subterranean elements still try to announce themselves, he hurls them back immediately into their underworld; he allows himself to think of nothing that offends too much his attitudes, his morality and his feelings. He does not give verbal expression to the disturbers of the peace that dwell in his heart of hearts. ”

“ They alone know, perhaps, how voiceless and unfathomable are the waters on which the fragile shell of daily life reposes: they have approached nearer to God, and the steps they have taken towards the light are steps that can never be lost, for the soul [11] may not rise, perhaps, but it can never sink.... ‘Silence, the great Empire of Silence,’ says Carlyle again—he who understood so well the empire of the life which holds us—‘higher than the stars, deeper than the Kingdom of Death!... Silence, and the great silent men!... ”

“ There was yet a small, still voice, that would intrude itself upon the young man, and despite his attempts to silence it forever, would steal upon him in the silent hour of midnight, and haunt him in the noisy abodes of revelry and carousal. ”

“ They are among the silent, I believe; mostly far away from platforms and public palaverings; not speaking forth the image of their nobleness in transitory words, but imprinting it, each on his own little section of the world, in silent facts, in modest valiant actions, that will endure forevermore. They must sit silent no longer. They are summoned to assert themselves; to act forth, and articulately vindicate, in the teeth of howling multitudes, of a world too justly maddened into all manner of delirious clamors, what of wisdom they derive from God. ”

“ People who shout so loud, my lords, do nothing;
The only men I fear are silent men. ”

“ Silent is my garment when I tread the earth
or dwell in the towns or stir the waters.
Sometimes my trappings lift me up over
the habitations of heroes and this high air,
and the might of the welkin bears me afar
above mankind. ”

“ A silent, withdrawn man he was, living close to Mother Earth, twin-brother of Labour, to whom Morning and Daytime were sounding-boards for his axe, scythe, saw, flail, and milking-pail, and Night a round hollow of darkness into which he crept, shutting the doors called Silence behind him, till the impish page of Toil came tapping again, and he stepped awkwardly into the working world once more. ”

“ If we would enjoy the most intimate society with that in each of us which is without, or above, being spoken to, we must not only be silent, but commonly so far apart bodily that we cannot possibly hear each other's voice in any case. ”

“ Bodies and voices are lent by writing to thought ever silent, Over the centuries' stream bears it the eloquent page. Then to the wondering gaze dissolves the cloud of the fancy, And the vain phantoms of night yield to the dawning of day. Man now breaks through his fetters, the happy one! Oh, let him never Break from the bridle of shame, when from fear's fetters he breaks Freedom! is reason's cry,—ay, freedom! ”

“ Again I noted that broad, classic brow, with the little tendrils of shining bronze caressing it, the tilted, delicate, nut-brown brows that gave a curious touch of innocent diablerie to the lovely face—flowerlike, pure, high-bred. A touch of roguishness, subtly alluring, sparkling over the maiden Madonna-ness that lay ever like a delicate, luminous suggestion beneath it.
"What is wisdom, O maiden, but clear seeing and understanding?" ”

“ It is a silence not of thanklessness, but of respect and devotion. About others—contemporaries, or juniors by many years—who have instructed, consoled, strengthened, and amused us, we must also be silent. ”

“ For the past year it had become an increasing horror to look into the silent faces of this crowd of men and women and never feel the touch of a friendly hand or hear the sound of a human voice in greeting. ”

“ A HEAD the mist deepened into a ruddier glow; through it a long, dark line began to appear—the mouth, I thought, of the caverned space through which we were going; it was just before us; over us—we stood bathed in a flood of rubescence!
A sea stretched before us—a crimson sea, gleaming like that lost lacquer of royal coral and the Flame Dragon's blood which Fu S'cze set upon the bower he built for the sun maiden he had stolen—that going toward it she might think it the sun itself rising over the summer seas. ”

“ Silent enough now are the bleak, stony hillsides, albeit the day through they have been speaking, and their voice has been winged with death. Silent enough, too, are the men crouching here in long rows, cool, patient, alert; for on the success or failure of their strategy depends triumph or disaster and death. ”

“ But if, either by duty or situation, we maintain too close an intercourse with society, if we are obliged, in spite of inclination, to submit to frivolous and fatiguing dissipations, it is only by quitting the tumult, and entering into silent meditation, that we feel that effervescence, that desire to break from bondage, to fly from past errors, and avoid in future every noisy and tumultuous pleasure. ”

“ Whoever has not comprehended the highest and most actual elements of our life when they assert themselves, is condemned to silence. Only by silent acts and conduct can she attest the growing inner participation in the higher and nobler human deeds. ”

“ Let bearded men, wrecked on their own fierce lawless passions, seek these dark cells, these painful vigils, these unmeaning mortifications. They are not for thee. The world awaits thy coming. The pawing steed, throwing the white froth flakes o’er his broad chest, impatiently awaits thee. ”

“ They are inexhaustible in extent as in variety: and oh! in the silent vigil by the suffering couch, or during the languor of indisposition, who can too highly praise those silent friends—silent indeed to the ear, but speaking eloquently to the heart—which beguile, even transiently, the mind from present depressing care, strengthen and elevate it by communion with the past, or solace it by hopes of the future! ”

“ Not a word more was said on the subject, and the boys were again silent—one of those blessed, short silences in which the resolves which colour a life are so often taken. ”

“ Last of the race of them who grieve,
Here leave us to die out with these
Last of the people who believe!
Silent, while years engrave the brow;
Silent—the best are silent now. ”

“ Amid the babel of the schools we stand bewildered and affrighted. Silence gives us peace and hope. Silence teaches us no creed, only that God’s arms are around the universe.
How small and unimportant seem all our fretful troubles and ambitions when we stand with them in our hand before the great calm face of Silence! We smile at them ourselves, and are ashamed. ”

“ Between them and the world there is thrust a mask of reserve and shyness—a mask the expression of which they positively hate, but are unable to tear it down from their faces. Thus they live lonely in a world of other lonely souls; no one can help them, and they are too timid of rebuff to help themselves. ”

“ But had they known—could they have seen into this tumultuous heart—what a silence would have settled upon these noisy streets; and in what terror and soul-confusion would each man have slunk away from his fellows into the quiet and solitude of his own home. ”

“ There are things about which certain historic epochs are strangely silent; so much so, indeed, that the breaking of the silence impresses us almost as the more than human breaking of a spell; and that silence Is the result of a grievous wrong, of a moral disease which half closes the eyes of the fancy, or of a moral poison which presents to those sorely aching eyes only a glimmer amid darkness. ”

“ Those silent heroes who have turned away from the world, and behind whom and back of whom there lie struggle and passion, step out from the world of sensuality, in which they have become and remained mute, into the realm of spirituality. ”

“ Yes, I know well that others before me have felt what I feel and express; that many others feel it to-day, although they keep silence about it. Why do I not keep silence about it too? Well, for the very reason that most of those who feel it are silent about it; and yet, though they are silent, they obey in silence that inner voice. And I do not keep silence about it because it is for many the thing which must not be spoken, the abomination of abominations—infandum—and I believe that it is necessary now and again to speak the thing which must not be spoken. But if it leads to nothing? ”