Page:Some soldier poets.djvu/80

Rh always before long he expects "a face full of smiles," a young woman's, always the same, though now the eyes are blue, now grey, now brown, though the hair curls or is smooth, though name after name seems to fit it, though blue jewels made from feathers crown it or coral from the sea, helmeted now in fur and now in mail, or white-capped like "a fairy hooded in one bell of the valley-lily," or, uncovered, with tresses that play with the wind. The eyes are always innocent, always welcoming, but so various that, despite a constant homeliness, it is a goddess's face—her laugh is heard wherever this or that in the world has pleased eye or ear of this wanderer, whose heart has remained young and fresh as that of a boy. And he, he forgets his life, forgets the stones and glinting mica silt that floor that limpid trough, forgets the grass of Parnassus that he has set floating on it, and is where she is, while contentment fills him and that lonely place. 76