The Coffin, It Shall Protect Me, Though

You May Turn Into An Archangel, A Fool, Or A Criminal—no One Will See It. But When A Button Is Missing—everyone Sees That.

Yes, That's The Way They Think, These Hundred Thousand Kantoreks! Iron Youth! Youth! We Are None Of Us More Than Twenty Years Old. But Young? That Is Long Ago. We Are Old Folk.

For A Moment I Had A Strange Intuition That Just This, And In A Real, Profound Sense, Is Life; And Perhaps Happiness Even - Love With A Mixture Of Sadness, Reverence, And Silent Knowledge.

And Even If These Scenes From Our Youth Were Given Back To Us We Would Hardly Know What To Do. The Tender, Secret Influence That Passed From Them Into Us Could Not Rise Again. We Might Be Amongst Them And Move In Them; We Might Remember And Love Them And Be Stirred By The Sight Of Them. But It Would Be Like Gazing At The Photograph Of A Dead Comrade; Those Are His Features, It Is His Face, And The Days We Spent Together Take On A Mournful Life In The Memory; But The Man Himself It Is Not.

There Was Only The Broad Square With The Scattered Dim Moons Of The Street Lamps And With The Monumental Stone Arch Which Receded Into The Mist As Though It Would Prop Up The Melancholy Sky And Protect Beneath Itself The Faint Lonely Flame On The Tomb Of The Unknown Soldier, Which Looked Like The Last Grave Of Mankind In The Midst Of Night And Loneliness.