Morty's career had been a stormy one ....

He had gone out into the world, and had battled and struggled in the holy cause, yet the cause was not advanced, and it was all nothing.

He was about to leave the old place, probably for ever.

Yet there it was, tranquil, calm, indifferent whether he came or went.

What was he?
What was any one?
To what purpose the ineffectual strivings of short-lived humanity?
Man's life was but the shadow of a dream, and his work was but the heaping of sand which the next tide would level flat again." Wordsworth's "pathetic fallacy" that the moods of nature correspond with the moods of man has seldom found such eloquent illustration as in Morty's vain imaginings.