As Ernest listened to the poet, he imagined that the Great Stone Face was bending forward to listen too.  He gazed earnestly into the poet’s glowing eyes.

“Who are you, my strangely gifted guest?” he said.

The poet laid his finger on the volume that Ernest had been reading.

“You have read these poems,” said he.  “You know me, then—­for I wrote them.”

Again, and still more earnestly than before, Ernest examined the poet’s features; then turned toward the Great Stone Face; then back, with an uncertain aspect, to his guest.  But his countenance fell; he shook his head, and sighed.

“Wherefore are you sad?” inquired the poet.

“Because,” replied Ernest, “all through life I have awaited the fulfilment of a prophecy; and, when I read these poems, I hoped that it might be fulfilled in you.”

“You hoped,” answered the poet, faintly smiling, “to find in me the likeness of the Great Stone Face.  And you are disappointed, as formerly with Mr. Gathergold, and Old Blood-and-Thunder, and Old Stony Phiz.  Yes, Ernest, it is my doom.  You must add my name to the illustrious three, and record another failure of your hopes.  For—­in shame and sadness do I speak it, Ernest—­I am not worthy to be typified by yonder benign and majestic image.”

“And why?” asked Ernest.  He pointed to the volume.  “Are not those thoughts divine?”

“They have a strain of the Divinity,” replied the poet.  “You can hear in them the far-off echo of a heavenly song.  But my life, dear Ernest, has not corresponded with my thought.  I have had grand dreams, but they have been only dreams, because I have lived—­and that, too, by my own choice—­among poor and mean realities.  Sometimes even—­shall I dare to say it?—­I lack faith in the grandeur, the beauty, and the goodness, which my own works are said to have made more evident in nature and in human life.  Why, then, pure seeker of the good and true, shouldst thou hope to find me, in yonder image of the divine?”

The poet spoke sadly, and his eyes were dim with tears.  So, likewise, were those of Ernest.

At the hour of sunset, as had long been his frequent custom, Ernest was to discourse to an assemblage of the neighboring inhabitants in the open air.  He and the poet, arm in arm, still talking together as they went along, proceeded to the spot.  It was a small nook among the hills, with a gray precipice behind, the stern front of which was relieved by the pleasant foliage of many creeping plants, that made a tapestry for the naked rock, by hanging their festoons from all its rugged angles.  At a small elevation above the ground, set in a rich framework of verdure, there appeared a niche, spacious enough to admit a human figure, with freedom for such gestures as spontaneously ascompany earnest thought and genuine emotion.  Into this natural pulpit Ernest ascended, and threw a look of familiar kindness around upon his audience.  They stood, or sat, or reclined upon the grass, as seemed good to each, with the departing sunshine falling obliquely over them, and mingling its subdued cheerfulness with the solemnity of a grove of ancient trees, beneath and amid the boughs of which the golden rays were constrained to pass.  In another direction was seen the Great Stone Face, with the same cheer, combined with the same solemnity, in its benignant aspect.