(urth) the pelagic argosy sights the new sun

[Marc Aramini]

You know, occasionally I see a quote and I think, wow, Gene is one tricky guy.  PLEASE read this quote, from Citadel of the Autarch, p 400 of Sword and Citadel.  Always sure that use of the world pelagic and argosies was more than just a catch phrase for Vodalus and people associated with him, almost like a creed, then I read this last night, something I must have just looked over without seeing for years.

"Below them the necropolis spread an embroidery of mingled white and green.  I know it is fashionable to speak in tones of faint digust of the "unhealthy" growth of the lawns and trees in such places, but I have never observed that there is actually anything unhealthy about it.  Green things die that men may live, and MEN DIE THAT GREEN THINGS MAY LIVE, even that ignorant and innocent man I killed with his own ax there long ago.  All our foliage is faded, so it is said, and no doubt it is so, and when the New Sun comes, his bride, the New Urth, will give glory to him with leaves like emeralds.  But in the present day, the day of the old sun and old Urth, I have never seen any other green so deep as the great pines' in the necropolis when the wind swells their branches.  They draw their strength from the departed generations of mankind, and the masts of argosies, that are built up of many trees, are not so high as they."

I was especially mindful of the use of argosies here, built of trees, but those man made spars are not so high as those trees built upon the vanished generations of mankind.  I am SURE Wolfe had this plan all along.