What do all those old and sweet dreams mean
for me, the sunlight that breaks on the stream of human souls,
flowing all together, alike through dark rocks where the water
chafes and thunders, and spreading out into tranquil shining
reaches, where the herons stand half asleep? What does that strange
drift of kindred spirits, moving from the unknown to the unknown,
mean for me? I only know that it brings into my mind a strange
yearning, and a desire of almost unearthly sweetness for all that
is delicate and beautiful and full of charm, together with a sombre
pity for the falling mist of tears, the hard discipline of the
world, the cries of anguish, as life lapses from the steep into the
silent tide of death.
Or, again, I seem once more to sit in the balcony of a house that
looks out towards Vesuvius. It is late; the sky is clouded, the air
is still; a grateful coolness comes up from acre after acre of
gardens climbing the steep slope; a fluttering breeze, that seems
to have lost his way in the dusk, comes timidly and whimsically
past, like Ariel, singing as soft as a far-off falling sea in the
great pine overhead, making a little sudden flutter in the dry
leaves of the thick creeper; like Ariel comes that dainty spirit of
the air, laden with balmy scents and cool dew.
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