Men go and come, but earth abides

“Men go and come, but earth abides” is the line Ish recalls and completes as he lies dying on the Bay Bridge. Its movement from a half-remembered fragment to his final reflection joins the passing of human generations to the persistence of the earth, without promising that civilization will return unchanged—or should.

The Fragment and Its Completion

Earlier in his final vigil, Ish half-remembers a line from a book he had read sometime during the many years in which he read so much. He can summon only “Men go and come...” and finds the fragment trite and meaningless without its other half. The saying is not yet a consolation: its unfinished form leaves its meaning suspended.

The line returns when Ish looks toward the young men gathered around him. He recognizes them as the first of a new human age and himself as the last of the old; then the missing words give the fragment its completion: “Men go and come, but earth abides.” The restored sentence answers the disappearance of one generation with the persistence of the ground to which people return.

The Saying at the End

The words arrive as Ish understands that he is dying. After the hammer’s inheritance has been settled and the others have stopped troubling him, he rests in a state of acceptance. His final thought applies the saying in both directions: the young men will commit him to the earth, but he also commits them to it. The earth is not merely what outlasts one life; it is the common destination that binds generations separated by thousands of years.

The line also gathers the novel’s final contrasts into a single thought. Ish has lived beyond the world in which he was born, while the young men face a future he cannot know. He wonders whether their new society will repeat the old course, and thinks of the slavery, conquest, war, and oppression involved in building civilization. The earth’s endurance therefore offers no guarantee that human history will improve or simply begin again: people pass, while the future remains open.