| Show 0 CUND 07 1 aa THAT HAVE GONE INTO OBLIVION sabat vanished sounds what alne aln ghosts of 0 the ear rise from the tb known years screaming upon their axles in a storm of dust and hoot hoofs the war char chariots lots charge over the or biblical plat plain the measured plash of oars in banks rises from some galley bound for ostia the heavy wooden pound ot of the quartermasters quartermaster timing nince mace heard muffled from be low decks behind Pen bentelle telle lc colonnades the stringed music ot of lost instruments mingles with a vast clu chanting inting before the gods one hears the hiss of streams of greek fire from byzantine citadels bells ringing against thunderstorms in gothic cities the popgun sound of renaissance artillery the rumble of the first coaches on the first good roads ads and the howl of wind in the rigging of an eighteenth century an man of war in foul weather at anchor in the downs dowds they are all gone men will hear them no more and in our own day the last sounds of the handicrafts descend fighting gallantly toward the same oblivion it may be that they will hold their ultimate own and presently mount passing on their upward way the whole huge childishness of modern noise down tumbling what contemporary sound one pauses to ask will summon up our own strange years the universal grind of scars cars when traffic starts again at a light the demoniac tattoo of a riveter in my own mind tt it Is something more subtle more like the dry merciless electrical tick one hears in the pressured silence of a power room a small sound obedient without life and astronomically alien to the bones of man henry beston in the atlantic monthly |
