the sun of noon
And they express , above all , death , as the large funereal slabs , with which the nave is paved , express it , as the cypress trees and the tombs express it , and all the things in this place , where the men come to pray , express it : death , always death . -- But a death very softly neighboring life , under the shield of the old consoling symbols -- for life is there marked also , almost equally sovereign , in the warm rays which light up the cemetery , in the eyes of the children who play among the roses of autumn , in the smile of those beautiful brown girls who , the mass being finished , return with steps indolently supple toward the village ; in the muscles of all this youthfulness of men , alert and vigorous , who shall soon exercise at the ball-game their iron legs and arms . -- And of this group of old men and of boys at the threshold of a church , of this mingling , so peacefully harmonious , of death and of life , comes the benevolent lesson , the teaching that one must enjoy in time strength and love ; then , without obstinacy in enduring , submit to the universal law of passing and dying , repeating with confidence , like these simple-minded and wise men , the same prayers by which the agonies of the ancestors were cradled . -- It is improbably radiant , the sun of noon in this yard of the dead . The air is exquisite and one becomes intoxicated by breathing it . The Pyrenean horizons have been swept of their clouds , their least vapors , and it seems as if the wind of the south had brought here the limpidities of Andalusia or of Africa . The Basque guitar and tambourine accompany the sung seguilla , which the beggars of Spain throw , like a slight irony into this lukewarm breeze , above the dead .