Page:Fantastics and other Fancies.djvu/192

 "So that a great envy came upon me of the winds and waves and birds that circle forever with the eternal circling of the world. Nightly the large eyes, half fierce, half tender, glimmered through my sleep:—phantom winds called to me, and shadowy seas chanted through their foam-flecked lips runes weird as the Runes of Odin. "And I hated cities with the hatred of the camel,—the camel that sobs and moans on beholding afar, on the yellow rim of the desert, the corpse-white finger of a minaret pointing to the dome of Mahomet's heaven.

"Also I hated the rumble of traffic and the roar of the race for gold; the shadows of palaces on burning streets; the sound of toiling feet; the black breath of towered chimneys; and the vast machines, forever laboring with sinews of brass, and panting with heart of steam and steel.

"Only loved I the eyes of night and the women eyes that haunted me,—the silence of rolling plains, the whispers of untrodden woods, the shadows of flying birds and