FOR WHAT GREAT reward of my merit, O Beautiful, had I, a meadow-flower, once taken my place in the chain on thy neck? The newly-wakened eyes of the earth were glad on that day, and the lute, at the touch of the Ever-new, broke out in melodies of dawn. If that flower fades and drops to the earth at the dim hour of the day, when the bird's songs are languid, let the evening wind sweep it away across the dark, following thy departing steps, never leaving it to be trodden to the dust by the careless moments.
THE EVENING stood bewildered among street lamps, its gold tarnished by the city dust. A woman, gaudily decked and painted, leant over the rail of her balcony, a living fire waiting for its moths. Suddenly an eddy was formed in the road round a street-boy crushed under the wheels of a carriage, and the woman on the balcony fell to the floor screaming in agony, stricken with the grief of the great white-robed Mother who sits in the world's inner shrine.
