Will you reject me, O Unknown? My torturing doubts, my
passionate search for truth, my difficult life, my voluntary
death--accept them as a bloodless offering, as a prayer, as a sigh!
Absorb them as the immeasurable ether absorbs the evaporating mists!
Take them, you whose name I do not know, let not the ghosts of the
night I have traversed bar the way to you, to eternal light! Give way,
you shades who dim the light of the dawn! I tell you, gods of my
people, you are unjust, and where there is no justice there can be no
truth, but only phantoms, creations of a dream. To this conclusion
have I come, I, Socrates, who sought to fathom all things. Rise, dead
mists, I go my way to Him whom I have sought all my life long!"
The thunder burst again--a short, abrupt peal, as if the egis had
fallen from the weakened hand of the thunderer. Storm-voices trembled
from the mountains, sounding dully in the gorges, and died away in the
clefts. In their place resounded other, marvellous tones.
When Ctesippus looked up in astonishment, a spectacle presented itself
such as no mortal eyes had ever seen.
The night vanished. The clouds lifted, and godly figures floated in
the azure like golden ornaments on the hem of a festive robe.
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