The Golden Threshold | Page 6

black night I stood in a garden with fireflies in my hair like darting restless stars caught in a mesh of darkness. It gave me a strange sensation, as if I were not human at all, but an elfin spirit. I wonder why these little things move me so deeply? It is because I have a most 'unbalanced intellect,' I suppose." Then, looking out on Florence, she cries, "God! how beautiful it is, and how glad I am that I am alive to-day!" And she tells me that she is drinking in the beauty like wine, "wine, golden and scented, and shining, fit for the gods; and the gods have drunk it, the dead gods of Etruria, two thousand years ago. Did I say dead? No, for the gods are immortal, and one might still find them loitering in some solitary dell on the grey hillsides of Fiesole. Have I seen them? Yes, looking with dreaming eyes, I have found them sitting under the olives, in their grave, strong, antique beauty--Etruscan gods!"
In Italy she watches the faces of the monks, and at one moment longs to attain to their peace by renunciation, longs for Nirvana; "then, when one comes out again into the hot sunshine that warms one's blood, and sees the eager hurrying faces of men and women in the street, dramatic faces over which the disturbing experiences of life have passed and left their symbols, one's heart thrills up into one's throat. No, no, no, a thousand times no! how can one deliberately renounce this coloured, unquiet, fiery human life of the earth?" And, all the time, her subtle criticism is alert, and this woman of the East marvels at the women of the West, "the beautiful worldly women of the West," whom she sees walking in the Cascine, "taking the air so consciously attractive in their brilliant toilettes, in the brilliant coquetry of their manner!" She finds them "a little incomprehensible," "profound artists in all the subtle intricacies of fascination," and asks if these "incalculable frivolities and vanities and coquetries and caprices" are, to us, an essential part of their charm? And she watches them with amusement as they flutter about her, petting her as if she were a nice child, a child or a toy, not dreaming that she is saying to herself sorrowfully: "How utterly empty their lives must be of all spiritual beauty IF they are nothing more than they appear to be."
She sat in our midst, and judged us, and few knew what was passing behind that face "like an awakening soul," to use one of her own epithets. Her eyes were like deep pools, and you seemed to fall through them into depths below depths.
ARTHUR SYMONS.

FOLK SONGS
PALANQUIN BEARERS
Lightly, O lightly we bear her along, She sways like a flower in the wind of our song; She skims like a bird on the foam of a stream, She floats like a laugh from the lips of a dream. Gaily, O gaily we glide and we sing, We bear her along like a pearl on a string.
Softly, O softly we bear her along, She hangs like a star in the dew of our song; She springs like a beam on the brow of the tide, She falls like a tear from the eyes of a bride. Lightly, O lightly we glide and we sing, We bear her along like a pearl on a string.

WANDERING SINGERS (Written to one of their Tunes)
Where the voice of the wind calls our wandering feet, Through echoing forest and echoing street, With lutes in our hands ever-singing we roam, All men are our kindred, the world is our home.
Our lays are of cities whose lustre is shed, The laughter and beauty of women long dead; The sword of old battles, the crown of old kings, And happy and simple and sorrowful things.
What hope shall we gather, what dreams shall we sow? Where the wind calls our wandering footsteps we go. No love bids us tarry, no joy bids us wait: The voice of the wind is the voice of our fate.

INDIAN WEAVERS
Weavers, weaving at break of day, Why do you weave a garment so gay? . . . Blue as the wing of a halcyon wild, We weave the robes of a new-born child.
Weavers, weaving at fall of night, Why do you weave a garment so bright? . . . Like the plumes of a peacock, purple and green, We weave the marriage-veils of a queen.
Weavers, weaving solemn and still, What do you weave in the moonlight chill? . . . White as a feather and white as a cloud, We weave a dead man's funeral shroud.

COROMANDEL FISHERS
Rise, brothers, rise, the wakening skies pray to the morning light, The wind lies asleep in the arms of the dawn like