OCR Text |
Show "And do you know the symbol for my faith in life?" he said. Alban answered that he had no real faith in nymphs and water-sprites, in Demeter and Persephone, the mother and the daughter of the com and fruitful earth. "I pay unwilling vows to Mars as we prepare to seige the Celts because I want to be buried in Rome and not this savage isle." "There is a god has come to earth to tell all men about his ways and means to live their lives in him, and how to gain an everlasting life." He scoffed at this remark because at once he knew the emissary's own belief: he was a Christian follower, and that anathema to Rome was all his faith. And Alban sensed he knew he'd not betray this confidence. And yet he told no more about the Jew Jesus and what he had accomplished in his life and afterwards had risen from the dead, and had been seen by witnesses who later told his life. And Alban shrugged. The duty day had come to end. V That night in dream he saw a vision clear as if it were in day: from out the sea no goddess came, the air and sea were calm, when suddenly there was a gush of wind, and when he turned he heard a voice that said, "And what you see engrave as on a stone upon your •memory." He looked and saw a golden lamp-stand on a ship afloat the quiet sea, and on the ship a man with whitened tunic girt with golden cords, whose head and hair were white as wool or snow in blinding light, whose eyes were flaming coals; his feet were like the burnished brass of hot blast furnaces; his voice was like the sound of many waters.. A star he held did melt the images in bronze of all the emperors of Rome along the ship's high deck. Then out his mouth there came a two-edged sword which cleaved the sky and made the sun to dance. And $lban saw, as if he were awake, a shield of bronze enclosed with his profilewhich shone above the sea and over all the island of his dream. |