Page:Von Heidenstam - Sweden's laureate, selected poems of Verner von Heidenstam (1919).djvu/61



Welcome, thou cool oriental evening, welcome! After the hot day thou art as a pitcher of water after a ride in the desert. Thou art as a pale young wife, who from the hill beckons home the sweating toiler of the fields. Thou art like the Tartar jeweler's opal, for thy color shifts between the white of milk and the glowing red of wine in the same manner that thy joy shifts between healthful, strengthening repose and enkindling merriment.

With this apostrophe I saluted the evening and reined up my jenny in a small ravine which clambered up toward Jerusalem. The city lay on a height, with its surrounding wall and its cupola-ed white houses, like a four-cornered basket full of eggs. Before the city gate, white-clad widows were sitting motionless at the graves of their husbands, mirrored in a great, quiet, colorless pool.

All at once came the dusk. The road of the ravine became full of people—for the time of the Passover was drawing near.

At the door of a small cottage, where women were preparing supper, was seated Christ, the Brotherer. Although His face could not be wholly distinguished, because the light of an oil-lamp within the house fell upon his back, yet one could tell at once who He was. His dark hair hung in rough luxuriance