III.

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Again the poet stood on the pulo tnouuttiiti of his desire, and the almond Imd begun to blossom in his hair, and he stooped a.s old men stoop, looking for the dreamless pillow of earth after the weary day. " I have hunted the marsh light," he said, " I have followed fire that is no (ire. The snow-drifts of time havo heaped mo with a frozen doubt that will not melt this side of the judgment day. All these years I havo hidden in my heart light that was no light, fire that was no lire. Who am I that havo called my fellows barnfowl —my fellows, who have lived their ripe and accepted lives in animal content and honest mediocrity ? They

followed no marsh light ; they won their goal ; they neither sought nor sinned against the Elusive, the Nameless." Then the mother flame at the heart of Hertha shone out upon him, and in clairaudience of the soul he heard that speak which the Eabbis of old called the Daughter of the Voice. " Behold thy brethren, the coral insects," it breathed. Instantly he turned in spirit to the snow-flecked azure of the sea. Submarine terraces were laid bare ; there in the workshops of the sea tiny creatures in myriads sprang to life, grew greater, and died, leaving their atoms of shining rock to the vast pile. Time and space were not ; he saw the sharp points rise like the towers of Ilium till they pierced into the light of day. " Behold thyself, singer of a new land," sighed the Danghter of the Voice. " Building and dying, dying and building ! Blessed are they whose bones bear up the atolls of paradise ! " Then he saw how organic flotsam of ocean drifted round the barren sheen of coral ; slowly rich mould gathered on the rising reef ; slowly a green bridal veil covered the latest island bride of the deep; birds of rainbow wing found a home in the glorious frondage. At last the atoll was crowned

with the greatest glory of all. Slim, supple children of the surf and the sun-built stainless temples, red with no sacrifice but flaming flowers, and chanted mysterious hymns coeval with the Vedas, lifting their theme higher and higher till it melted in the all but nameless entity of To the supreme. Then the poet understood. " I have seen the Temple of Art, the everlasting Art which is the pure essence of all beauty, all love. It rose out of the surf on the pyramids of myriad welded lives. The temple floor needed them all. The soft, separate jelly of mortality, quivering with desire and suffering, had to be beaten out for ever by the cold waves; the immortal uusentient rock-atom remained. It is the day of the coral insect with my beloved land and with me. Infinite reward of true love ! 1 see where the Elusive, the Nameless, shall make its home with me, and that homo is upon our dead bodies ! " The vision faded ; he went down into the market place, and took lonely service there, singing still, but now looking for no reward. When his last hour was near he made a swan song of the vision of coral, and a grand content sat upon his face as he ended. " Building and dying, dying and building! Well said the Daughter of the Voice !"