tall ships
may go through the unguarded Straits and find the Happy Isles. And
the Happy Isles stand midmost among the smiles of the sunny Further
Seas, and there the sailors may come upon content and long for
nothing; or if they long for aught, they shall possess it.

'There comes not Time with his devouring hours; nor any of the evils
of the gods or men. These are the islands whereto the souls of the
sailors every night put in from all the world to rest from going up
and down the seas, to behold again the vision of far-off intimate
hills that lift their orchards high above the fields facing the
sunlight, and for a while again to speak with the souls of old. But
about the dawn dreams twitter and arise, and circling thrice around
the Happy Isles set out again to find the world of men, then follow
the souls of the sailors, as, at evening, with slow stroke of
stately wings the heron follows behind the flight of multitudinous
rooks; but the souls returning find awakening bodies and endure the
toil of the day. Such are the Happy Isles, whereunto few have come,
save but as roaming shadows in the night, and for only a little
while.

'But longer than is needed to make me strong and fierce again I may
not stay, and at set of sun, when my arms are strong again, and when
I feel in my legs that I can plant them fair and bent upon the floor
of ocean, then I go back to take a new grip upon the waters of the
Straits, and to guard the Further Seas again for a hundred years.
Because the gods are jealous, lest too many men shall pass to the
Happy Isles and find content. _For the gods have not content_.'

The Hurricane

One night I sat alone on the great down, looking over the edge of it
at a murky, sullen city. All day long with its smoke it had troubled
the holy sky, and now it sat there roaring in the distance and
glared at me with its furnaces and lighted factory windows. Suddenly
I became aware that I was not the only enemy of that city, for I
perceived the colossal form of the Hurricane walking over the down
towards me, playing idly with the flowers as he passed, and near me
he stopped and spake to the Earthquake, who had come up mole-like but
vast out of a cleft in the earth.

'Old friend,' said the Hurricane, 'rememberest when we wrecked the
nations and drave the herds of the sea into new pasturage?'

'Yes,' said the Earthquake, drowsily; 'Yes, yes.'

'Old friend,' said the Hurricane, 'there are cities everyw