flowers of their amours. These are the offspring of their embraces, the crystallised dew of their love. Yes, this one single, simple act of love brings forth an infinite variety of flowers to celebrate the death of the finite outward shape and the eternal essence of life perennial. In complete surrender lies the divineness of things eternal. This is the keynote of the Oriental mystic poets. And I incline to the belief that they of all bards have sung best the song of love. In rambling through the fields with these beautiful children of the terraces, I know not what draws me to al-Farid, the one erotic-mystic poet of Arabia, whose interminable rhymes have a perennial charm. Perhaps such lines as these—
‘All that is fair is fairer when she rises, All that is sweet is sweeter when she is here; And every form of beauty she surprises With one brief word she whispers in its ear:
‘Thy wondrous charms, O let them not deceive thee; They are but borrowed from her for a while; Thine outward guise and loveliness would grieve thee, If in thine inmost soul she did not smile.
‘All colours, forms, into each other merging, Are woven on her Loom of Unity; For she alone is One in All diverging, And she alone is absolute and free.’
“Now, I will bring you to a scene most curiously suggestive. Behold that little knot of daisies pressing around the alone anemone beneath the spreading leaves of the colocasia. Here is a rout at the Countess Casiacole’s, and these are the debutantes crowding around the Celebrity of the day. But would they do so if they were sensible of their own worth, if they knew that their idol, flaunting the crimson crown of popularity, had no more, and perhaps less, of the pure essence of life than any of them? But let Celebrity stand there and enjoy her hour; tomorrow the Ploughman will come.