PATRIARCH of the oldest rank, an elder of the high places brought low by time, who governeth the standing stone that remains when all its kin are gone. He appeareth alone upon an emptied plain, a single weathered hand raised against a hard sky, the last upright fragment of a realm the wind and rain have already carried away. He is no king and keeps no court; his dominion is endurance alone. His office is to hold his shape a little longer against the patience of the air, and to show the gold of a land all but emptied of life, the bare warmth of stone and sand that answer the secret light dully and alike, a poorer gold than any living forest. He is strongest in the long drought and weakest in the rare rain, which works the slow ruin he resists; and when at last he falls, the plain will not remember he stood.
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