A Painting in Spring

Hills? Or caravans of pearls, advancing deep into the festival of spring? Or temples of emerald, their slopes veiled at dusk with curtains of violet?

Are the goddesses at an eternal wedding? Is it that whenever their feet touch the earth, there rises from the earth a clamor of trilling colors, and the clusters of blossoms burst into light upon light... What are these mirrors on the throat of the bay?—It is the kiss of sun and water! The water wrought it into necklaces of pearls and wreaths of rainbows, and ranged them—for a whole age—that it might stud with them the breast of the bride-goddess.

My grief for the bay, when the mountain's shadow falls into the bay: the beads come unstrung, and the arches are scattered abroad.

And in the glow of the swaying surface the boats reeled—white doves trailing purple. From the farthest horizons they came, to pour out the jewels of the earth, to spill their censers at the foot of Sannine, and to attend the banquet of spring. They glide on, and beneath them the worlds of the sea lie still, gazing up at the sky to gather the stars!

And the sails have settled in the folds of the bay, awaiting the evening, till the stars come tumbling down upon them—from sky to sea—and they gather them up, and scatter them into the lap of the goddesses.