Oracles

NIGHT IN THE VALLEY I0I How pitiful, how beautiful, the faces ! The long hair shed on shoulders ivory white ! Each note shoots down the dim arboreal spaces Like amber or like hyaline lit with light. Each spirit glimmers in the shadowy places Like hyacinths or emeralds : or the night Shows them as shadows of some antique gem Where moonlight fills its cup and flashes into them. So, in the moony twilight and the splendour Of music’s light, the desolate nightingale Fills all the interlunar air with tender Kisses like song, or shrills upon the scale, Till quivering moonrays shake again, to send her Luminous tunes through every sleepy vale, While the slow dancers rhythmically reap The fairy amaranth, and silver wheat of sleep. Now over all that scythe of sleep impending Mows the pale flowers of vision following ; Dryad and bird and fount and valley blending Into one dreamy consciousness of spring ; And all the night and all the world is ending, And all the souls that weep and hearts that sing ! So, as the dew hides in the lotus blossom, Sleep draws me with her kiss into her bridal bosom. VERA CRUZ, March 31, 1901.