Young Ofeg's Ditties/Ditty 3
III.
There was once upon a time a manikin who wandered through the woods the whole night long, where the glow worms sparkled in the gloom. And when the morning came he stood at the fringe of the wood and watched the sun rise above the ocean.
Then the manikin sat down on the shore and wept. And when he raised his eyes again he saw the great Sea God resting on the surface of the waters. He lay stretched in all his length, with his arms folded, resting his head on his hands. His robe of green silk floated loosely round his body and glistened humidly when the waves lapped; and his hair streamed far out to the uttermost end of the sea like a broad streak of sunlight; and his green eyes rested on the manikin, who sat upon the strand and wept.
"Why do you cry?" asked he.
"I've lost my way," answered the manikin. "I wandered the whole night through, and I am weary. I want to sleep, but I cannot; I want to go home, but I hate home; I am sick of life."
"Well, you have got death," said the Sea God.
"I can't die," answered the manikin, and he shuddered; "life has been so beautiful, and I am so young."
"Well, then, go to my brother Pan," said the Sea God.
At that the manikin laughed ironically:
"He offered me flowers, but when I went to pluck them they turned into butterflies and flew on their way, and when I caught a butterfly a maggot remained in my hand. Your brother Pan is a rogue."
"Well, then, come to me," said the Sea God.
"What will you give me?"
"I will give you salt and sunshine, and a great prospect"
"You are so big—you frighten me."
The Sea God lifted a periwinkle in his palm: "And yet I find room in this tiny thing," said he.
"But you look so stern, and your face is so lone-lorn."
Then the Sea God laughed, and his laugh rippled like sun-ray across the sea; and he lifted his hand, and the depths parted, and the manikin gazed into a crimson coral cave slung with delicate green creepers, and its walls were a mosaic of pearls.
"But I'm bound," he cried, in distress of soul. "Let me go! for I love a woman."
Again the Sea God laughed at the manikin.
"Child," said he, "you say my brother Pan is a rogue, and yet you have never found out his greatest piece of roguery."
And he dipped his little finger in the ocean, and a whirlpool arose, flinging great drops of spray that resembled green pearls, and foam that shimmered like unto a silver white veil in the sunlight. And under the veil the manikin saw a woman's face, fairer than any he had hitherto seen. And the Sea God breathed upon it, and it vanished as a puff of smoke, dissolved into space.
Then the manikin stood up, and the ground slipped from under his feet, and slid away and rolled itself together far under the horizon, and he saw himself as a little dark speck on the boundless ocean under the boundless sky, and there was a silence as if all life had died, and the sun shone solitary in the universe.
And the manikin nestled with a feeling of unfathomable security close to the heart of the mighty solitude.