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Science Fiction Savant, issue 5, Summer 1946
Page 11
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Part Two: [Illegible] Fleshy fingers fabricate the frame. Lips inert, though the brain is never lame. The tissue paper is tautly plastered. Concepts vast are rapidly mastered. Ignorance vanquished in battle. Ha! Hear its death-rattle! RONDEL These many years since we began to be, What have the gods done with us? what with me, What with my love? they have shown me fates and fears, Harsh springs, and fountains bitterer than the sea, Grief a fixed star, and joy a vane that veers, These many years. With her, my love, with her have they done well? But who shall answer for her? who shall tell Sweet things or sad, such things as no man hears? May no tears fall, if no tears ever fell, From eyes more dear to me than starriest spheres These many years! But if tears ever touched, for any grief, Those eyelids folded like a white-rose leaf, Deep double shells where through the eye-flower peers, Let them weep once more only, sweet and brief, Brief tears and bright, for one who gave her tears These many years. -Algernon Charles Swinburne "If then one puts aside the existence of God and the possibility of survival as too doubtful to have any effect on one's behavior, one has to make up one's mind what is the meaning and use of life. If death ends all, if I have neither to hope for good to come nor to fear evil, I must ask myself what I am here for and how in these circumstances I must conduct myself. Now the answer to one of these questions is plain, but it is so unpalatable that most men will not face it. There is no reason for life and life has no meaning. We are here, inhabitants for a little while of a small planet, revolving around a minor star which in its turn is a member of one of unnumbered galaxies. It may be that this planet alone can support life, or it may be that in other parts of the universe other planets have had the possibility of forming a suitable environment to that substance from which, we suppose, along the vast course of time the men we are have been gradually created. And if the astronomer tells us
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Part Two: [Illegible] Fleshy fingers fabricate the frame. Lips inert, though the brain is never lame. The tissue paper is tautly plastered. Concepts vast are rapidly mastered. Ignorance vanquished in battle. Ha! Hear its death-rattle! RONDEL These many years since we began to be, What have the gods done with us? what with me, What with my love? they have shown me fates and fears, Harsh springs, and fountains bitterer than the sea, Grief a fixed star, and joy a vane that veers, These many years. With her, my love, with her have they done well? But who shall answer for her? who shall tell Sweet things or sad, such things as no man hears? May no tears fall, if no tears ever fell, From eyes more dear to me than starriest spheres These many years! But if tears ever touched, for any grief, Those eyelids folded like a white-rose leaf, Deep double shells where through the eye-flower peers, Let them weep once more only, sweet and brief, Brief tears and bright, for one who gave her tears These many years. -Algernon Charles Swinburne "If then one puts aside the existence of God and the possibility of survival as too doubtful to have any effect on one's behavior, one has to make up one's mind what is the meaning and use of life. If death ends all, if I have neither to hope for good to come nor to fear evil, I must ask myself what I am here for and how in these circumstances I must conduct myself. Now the answer to one of these questions is plain, but it is so unpalatable that most men will not face it. There is no reason for life and life has no meaning. We are here, inhabitants for a little while of a small planet, revolving around a minor star which in its turn is a member of one of unnumbered galaxies. It may be that this planet alone can support life, or it may be that in other parts of the universe other planets have had the possibility of forming a suitable environment to that substance from which, we suppose, along the vast course of time the men we are have been gradually created. And if the astronomer tells us
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