lidity, but ever
be this visitor from the unknown, this sacred bird, telling with her
half-seen, trailing-down plume--sails the story of uncharted wonder. If
only I might go on trembling, as I was, with the rapture of all I did not
know and could not see, yet felt pressing against me and touching my face
with its lips! To think of her at anchor in cold light was like
flinging-to a door in the face of happiness. And just then she struck
her bell; the faint silvery far-down sound fled away before her, and to
every side, out into the utter hush, to discover echo. But nothing
answered, as if fearing to break the spell of her coming, to brush with
reality the dark sea dew from her sail-wings. But within me, in
response, there began the song of all unknown things; the song so
tenuous, so ecstatic, that seems to sweep and quiver across such thin
golden strings, and like an eager dream dies too soon. The song of the
secret-knowing wind that has peered through so great forests and over
such wild sea; blown on so many faces, and in the jungles of the grass
the song of all that the wind has seen and felt. The song of lives that
I should never live; of the loves that I should never love singlng to me
as though I should! And suddenly I felt that I could not bear my little
ship of dreams to grow hard and grey, her bright lanterns drowned in the
cold light, her dark ropes spidery and taut, her sea-wan sails all
furled, and she no more en chanted; and turning away I let fall the
curtain.

II

Then what happens to the moon? She, who, shy and veiled, slips out
before dusk to take the air of heaven, wandering timidly among the
columned clouds, and fugitive from the staring of the sun; she, who, when
dusk has come, rules the sentient night with such chaste and icy
spell--whither and how does she retreat?

I came on her one morning--I surprised her. She was stealing into a dark
wintry wood, and five little stars were chasing her. She was
orange-hooded, a light-o'-love dismissed--unashamed and unfatigued,
having taken--all. And she was looking back with her almond eyes, across
her dark-ivory shoulder, at Night where he still lay drowned in the sleep
she had brought him. What a strange, slow, mocking look! So might
Aphrodite herself have looked back at some weary lover, remembering the
fire of his first embrace. Insatiate, smiling creature, slipping down to
the rim of the world to her bath in the sweet waters of dawn, whenc