Page:Fantastics and other Fancies.djvu/53

 And the flower-souls answered, making fragrant all the white streets of the white city of the dead:—

"We are the offerings of love bereaved to the All-loving,—the sacrifices of the fatherless to the All-father. We know not of the dead,—the Infinite secret hath not been revealed to us; —we know only that they sleep under the eye of Him who never sleeps. Thou hast seen the flowers die; but their perfumes live in the wings of the winds and sweeten all God's world. Is it not so with that fragrance of good deeds, which liveth after the deed hath been done,—or the memories of dead loves which soften the hearts of the living?"

And the cypresses together with the Shadows bowed answeringly; and the West Wind, ceasing to mourn, spread his gauzy wings in flight toward the rising of the sun.

The moon, sinking, made longer the long shadows; the South Wind caressed the cypresses, and, bearing with him ghosts of the flowers, rose in flight toward the dying fires of the stars.