the wild refrain of
those familiar lines recurred to him:

"I will wed some savage woman; she shall rear my dusky race:
Iron-jointed, supple-sinewed, they shall dive and they shall run,
Catch the wild goat by the hair, and hurl their lances in the sun,
Whistle back the parrot's call,--leap the rainbows of the brooks,--"

The woman of the ages had come back again. Lilith and Eve and Isis and
Venus, the foam-kissed, and Erda, the dreaming one. The vision of the
ancient world rose before him; virgin forests and plains and mighty
rivers and mountains; the ancient temples of the Nile and the Ganges,
Hellas' fanes and Druidic monoliths and sacred groves, and voices of
strange peoples mingled with the soft notes of reed and lute.

Within the unending circle of life and death, of love and hatred, of joy
and sorrow and remorse which mark the rise and passing of the
civilizations, he beheld the sacred ash and pine, and starry lotus
afloat upon the face of moonlit waters in which were mirrored the palm
and papyrus and acanthus, and stood face to face with the serpent and
wolf, the winged horse and sphinx, and the dragon and the griffin when
their secret origins and significance were known unto men. The sounds of
harps and cymbals and lyres and timbrels blended with those of
conch-shells and antelope horns. Sighs and laughter and curses and
weeping mingled with the wild strains of Homeric song and mystic rites
of Chaldea and Babylon, and the sacred chant of Isis. The Voodoo danced
to the rattle of shells and antelope hoofs before the shrines of
Ethiopia's dark woman, crowned with the sickle moon, and vast multitudes
knelt and lay prostrate before the car of Juggernaut and the passing
image of Pracriti of Asia, the many-breasted, the Goddess of Abundance.

Sun and Fire worshipers tore the hearts and scalps from living victims
and held them aloft to the rising sun, and men and wild beasts fought in
arenas amid the acclamations of the people.

He beheld the milk-white bullocks of the Druid, garlanded with flowers,
heading the procession that entered the dark groves in search of the
sacred mistletoe-bearing oak; the processions of Pan and Odin, and Siva
and Vishnu and Baal, and Venus and Bacchus. Nymphs and fauns and dryads
and hamadryads called from the depths of the forest, and youths and
maidens and shepherds with vine-wreathed brows danced in the sunlit
glades and on the hills where the white flocks roamed, to th