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VII.

See for a couch to their ambrosial limbs

Even as their golden load of splendour presses The fragrant thyme, a billowing cloud up-swims Of springing flowers beneath their deep caresses, Hyacinth, lotus, crocus, wildernesses

Of bloom

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but clouds of sunlight and of dew Dropping rich balm, round the dark pine-woods curled That the warm wonder of their in-woven tresses,

And all the secret blisses that they knew,

Where beauty kisses truth

In heaven's deep heart of youth,

Might still be hidden, as thou art, from the heartless world.

VIII.

Even as we found thy book, below these rocks
Perchance that strange great eagle's feather lay,
When Ganymede, from feeding of his flocks

On Ida, vanished thro' the morning gray:
Stranger it seemed, if thou couldst cast away
Those golden musics as a thing of nought,

A dream for which no longer thou hadst need!
Ah, was it here then that the break of day
Brought thee the substance for the shadow, taught
Thy soul a swifter road

To ease it of its load

And watch this world of shadows as a dream recede?

IX.

We slept! Darkling we slept! Our busy schemes,
Our cold mechanic world a-while was still;

But O, their eyes are blinded even in dreams

Who from the heavenlier Powers with-draw their will:

Here did the dawn with purer light fulfil

Thy happier eyes than ours, here didst thou see
The quivering wonder-light in flower and dew,

The quickening glory of the haunted hill,

The Hamadryad beckoning from the tree,
The Naiad from the stream;

While from her long dark dream

Earth woke, trembling with life, light, beauty, through and

through.

X.

And the everlasting miracle of things

Flowed round thee, and this dark earth opposed no bar, And radiant faces from the flowers and springs

Dawned on thee, whispering, Knowest thou whence we are? Faintly thou heardst us calling thee afar

As Hylas heard, swooning beneath the wave,

Girdled with glowing arms, while wood and glen

Echoed his name beneath that rosy star;

And thy farewell came faint as from the grave
For very bliss; but we

Could neither hear nor see;

And all the hill with Hylas! Hylas! rang again.

XI.

But there were deeper love-tales for thine ears
Than mellow-tongued Theocritus could tell:
Over him like a sea two thousand years

Had swept. They solemnized his music well!
Farewell! What word could answer but farewell,
From thee, O happy spirit, that couldst steal
So quietly from this world at break of day?
What voice of ours could break the silent spell
Beauty had cast upon thee, or reveal
The gates of sun and dew

Which oped and let thee through

And led thee heavenward by that deep enchanted way?

XII.

Yet here thou mad'st thy choice: Love, Wisdom, Power,
As once before young Paris, they stood here!

Beneath them Ida, like one full-blown flower,

Shed her bloom earthward thro' the radiant air
Leaving her rounded fruit, their beauty, bare
To the everlasting dawn; and, in thy palm
The golden apple of the Hesperian isle
Which thou must only yield to the Most Fair;
But not to Juno's great luxurious calm,
Nor Dian's curved white moon,

Gav'st thou the sunset's boon,

Nor to foam-bosomed Aphrodite's rose-lipped smile.

XIII.

Here didst thou make the eternal choice a-right,
Here, in this hallowed haunt of nymph and faun,
They stood before thee in that great new light,
The three great splendours of the immortal dawn,
With all the cloudy veils of Time with-drawn
Or only glistening round the firm white snows
Of their pure beauty like the golden dew
Brushed from the feathery ferns below the lawn;
But not to cold Diana's morning rose,

Nor to great Juno's frown

Cast thou the apple down,

And, when the Paphian raised her lustrous eyes anew,

XIV.

Thou from thy soul didst whisper-in that heaven
Which yearns beyond us! Lead me up the height!
How should the golden fruit to one be given

Till your three splendours in that Sun unite
Where each in each ye move like light in light?
How should I judge the rapture till I know

The pain? And like three waves of music there
They closed thee round, blinding thy blissful sight
With beauty and, like one roseate orb a-glow,
They bore thee on their breasts

Up the sun-smitten crests

And melted with thee smiling into the Most Fair.

XV.

Upward and onward, ever as ye went
The cities of the world nestled beneath

Closer, as if in love, round Ida, blent

With alien hills in one great bridal-wreath

Of dawn-flushed clouds; while, breathing with your breath,
New heavens mixed with your mounting bliss. Deep eyes,
Beautiful eyes, imbrued with the world's tears
Dawned on you, beautiful gleams of Love and Death
Flowed thro' your questioning with divine replies
From that ineffable height

Dark with excess of light

Where the Ever-living dies and the All-loving hears.

XVI.

For thou hadst seen what tears upon man's face
Bled from the heart or burned from out the brain,
And not denied or cursed, but couldst embrace
Infinite sweetness in the heart of pain,
And heardst those universal choirs again

Wherein like waves of one harmonious sea

All our slight dreams of heaven are singing still,
And still the throned Olympians swell the strain,
And, hark, the burden of all-Come unto Me!
Sky into deepening sky

Melts with that one great cry;

And the lost doves of Ida moan on Siloa's hill.

XVII.

I gather all the ages in my song

And send them singing up the heights to thee! Chord by æonian chord the stars prolong

Their passionate echoes to Eternity:

Earth wakes, and one orchestral symphony

Sweeps o'er the quivering harp-strings of man-kind;
Grief modulates into heaven, hate drowns in love,

No strife now but of love in that great sea

Of song! I dream! I dream! Mine eyes grow blind:
Chords that I not command

Escape the fainting hand;

Tears fall. Thou canst not hear. Thou'rt still too far above.

XVIII.

Farewell! What word should answer but farewell
From thee, O happy spirit, whose clear gaze
Discerned the path-clear, but unsearchable-
Where Olivet sweetens, deepens, Ida's praise,
The path that strikes as thro' a sun-lit haze
Through Time to that clear reconciling height
Where our commingling gleams of god-head dwell;

Strikes thro' the turmoil of our darkling days
To that great harmony where, like light in light,
Wisdom and Beauty still

Haunt the thrice-holy hill,

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what answer but farewell?

ALFRED NOYES.

NINETY DAYS' LEAVE-NOWHERE.

SOON after I returned home on leave last year, I ran across an old friend in the town near which I was staying. His Christian name is Wisdom, and, after a long and useful life's work, he is spending the autumn of his days in a Foundation, built and endowed by an Archbishop, housed in a noble pile of brick, and inhabited by a score of old "gownsmen" like himself. To belong to this Hospital implies that a member is not only of local birth but of irreproachable character, and to be nominated to fill a vacancy is

source of pride and congratulation to the recipient and his relatives.

Wisdom shook me kindly by the hand, and, in answer to my inquiries after his health, replied, "I'm just 'NOHOW,' sir,-just 'NOHOW""; and it struck me then and there that, had I possessed his power of terse speech, I might have saved myself, and my hearers, many long-winded explanations as to where I had been during my last shooting trip by saying "Just Nowhere, sir,-just 'NowHERE.'" But though too late for that, I can still paraphrase friend Wisdom and call this little story "A trip to Nowhere," or something of that sort.

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On the 15th April a brother officer named Addington and I packed ourselves, our ser

vants, our light kit, and our dogs into a couple of compartments and steamed out of the cantonment station in a downpour of unseasonable rain, and in equally unseasonable— though welcome-coolness.

Our destination was a littleknown country far away in the interior of the Himalayas, whose name and whereabouts I shall withhold till I succeed in reaching it, for the following chronicle is one of unsuccessful endeavour and of ultimate failure.

Away up through the plains of the Punjab we rolled that night, and early next morning arrived at the terminus of the line, and exchanged steam for horse-flesh,-horse-flesh of an emaciated but wiry type, that did not realise how innutritious was the hill grass on which it had to sustain life, but did realise that, though it was all collar work, the sooner the stage was covered the sooner would come rest. Eighty miles in a tonga brought us to P, and we drove up to the Dak Bungalow,-not dustsmothered as usual, but coated with mud, for the rain had accompanied us. The bungalow Khansamah promised us tea in five minutes, but before it appeared an English lady came out and told us that a case of smallpox had been discovered among her servants that day, and that orders had accordingly been sent by the Local Civil Authority for the

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