Page:Fantastics and other Fancies.djvu/135

 looked, and saw the summer sky blazing like amethyst; the palms swaying in the breezes from the sea; the flowers in the shadows of the sepulchres; the opal fires of the horizon; the birds that sang, and the river that rolled its whispering waves between tall palms and vast-leaved plants to the heaving emerald of the Spanish Main. The voices of women and sounds of argentine laughter and of footsteps and of music, and of merriment, also came through the fissure in the wall of the tomb;—sometimes also the noise of the swift feet of horses, and afar off the drowsy murmur made by the toiling heart of the city. So that the dead wished to live again; seeing that there was no rest in the tomb.

And the gold-born days died in golden fire; —and the moon whitened nightly the face of the earth; and the perfume of the summer passed away like a breath of incense;—but the dead in the sepulchre could not wholly die.

The voices of life entered his resting-place; the murmur of the world spoke to him in the darkness; the winds of the sea called to him through the crannies of the tomb. So that he