ered faded, pallid daffodils.

Said Yoomy, "Thy hopes are blighted all."

"Not dead, but living with the life of life. Sirens! I heed ye not."

They would have showered more flowers; but crowding sail we left them.

Much converse followed. Then, beneath the canopy all sought repose.
And ere long slouched sleep drew nigh, tending dreams innumerable;
silent dotting all the downs a shepherd with his flock.

CHAPTER XV
Dreams

Dreams! dreams! golden dreams: endless, and golden, as the flowery
prairies, that stretch away from the Rio Sacramento, in whose waters
Danae's shower was woven;--prairies like rounded eternities: jonquil
leaves beaten out; and my dreams herd like buffaloes, browsing on to
the horizon, and browsing on round the world; and among them, I dash
with my lance, to spear one, ere they all flee.

Dreams! dreams! passing and repassing, like Oriental empires in
history; and scepters wave thick, as Bruce's pikes at Bannockburn; and
crowns are plenty as marigolds in June. And far in the background,
hazy and blue, their steeps let down from the sky, loom Andes on
Andes, rooted on Alps; and all round me, long rushing oceans, roll
Amazons and Oronocos; waves, mounted Parthians; and, to and fro, toss
the wide woodlands: all the world an elk, and the forests its antlers.

But far to the South, past my Sicily suns and my vineyards, stretches
the Antarctic barrier of ice: a China wall, built up from the sea, and
nodding its frosted towers in the dun, clouded sky. Do Tartary and
Siberia lie beyond? Deathful, desolate dominions those; bleak and wild
the ocean, beating at that barrier's base, hovering 'twixt freezing
and foaming; and freighted with navies of ice-bergs,--warring worlds
crossing orbits; their long icicles, projecting like spears to the
charge. Wide away stream the floes of drift ice, frozen cemeteries of
skeletons and bones. White bears howl as they drift from their cubs;
and the grinding islands crush the skulls of the peering seals.

But beneath me, at the Equator, the earth pulses and beats like a
warrior's heart; till I know not, whether it be not myself. And my
soul sinks down to the depths, and soars to the skies; and comet-like
reels on through such boundless expanses, that methinks all the worlds
are my kin, and I invoke them to stay in their course. Yet, like a
mighty three-decker, towing argosies by scores, I tremble, gasp, and
strain in my flight, and fain would cast off the cables