id ranks of mist
Till they redden as with wounds
And dissolve in shining light.

Now hath triumph come to Day
And the gleaming conqueror
In his blinding glory treads
O'er the ridges and the peaks.

All the merry bands of birds
Twitter in their hidden nests,
And the scent of plants arises
Like a psalm of odours rare.

At the early glint of day
Down the valley we had gone.
While Lascaro dumb and dour
Followed up the bear-tracks dim,

I with musings sought to slay
Time, but tired soon I grew
Of my musings,--drear, ah, drear!
Were my thoughts and void of joy.

Weary, joyless, down I sank
On a bank of softest moss
'Neath a great and kingly ash
Where a little spring gushed forth.

This with wondrous voice beguiled
All my wayward mood until
Thought and thinking vanished both
In the music of the spring.

Mighty longings seized me then,
Madness, dreams and death-desires,
Longings for those splendid queens
Riding in that ghostly throng.

Oh, ye lovely shapes of night,
Banished by the rose of dawn,
Whither, tell me, have ye fled,
Whither have ye flown by day?

Somewhere 'neath old temple-ruins
In the wide Romagna hid,
It is said Diana flees
The dominion of the Christ.

Only in the midnight gloom,
Dare she venture forth, but then
How she joys the merry chase
And the pagan sports of old!

Fay Abunda also fears
All these sallow Nazarenes,
So by day she hides herself
Deep in secret Avalon.

For this sacred island lies
In the still and silent sea
Of Romanticism, whither
None save winged steeds may go.

There no anchor Care may drop,
Never there do steamships touch,
Bringing loads of Philistines
With tobacco-pipes, to stare.

Never does that dismal, dull
Ring of bells this stillness break--
That atrocious bumm-bamm sound
Which all gentle fairies hate.

There, abloom with lasting youth
In unbroken joyfulness,
Lives that merry-hearted dame,
Golden-locked Abunda fair.

Laughing there she strolls between
Huge sun-flowers drenched with light,
Followed by her retinue
Of unworldly Paladins.

Ah, but thou, Herodias,
Say, where art thou? Ah, I know!
Thou art d