red back to memory. The antiphon of sensual love begins,
goes on--the places, aspects, things, sounds, scents, that waited on
their ecstasy, the fire and consuming force of hers, the passive, no
less lustful, receptivity of his--and culminates in a chant to that
"crowning night" in July (and "the day of it too, Sebald!") when all
life seemed smothered up except their life, and, "buried in woods,"
while "heaven's pillars seemed o'erbowed with heat," they lay quiescent,
till the storm came--

"Swift ran the searching tempest overhead;
And ever and anon some bright white shaft
Burned thro' the pine-tree roof, here burned and there,
As if God's messenger thro' the close wood screen
Plunged and replunged his weapon at a venture,
Feeling for guilty thee and me; then broke
The thunder like a whole sea overhead . . ."

--while she, in a frenzy of passion--

". . . stretched myself upon you, hands
To hands, my mouth to your hot mouth, and shook
All my locks loose, and covered you with them--
You, Sebald, the same you!"

But the flame of her is scorching the feeble lover; feebly he pleads,
resists, begs pardon for the harsh words he has given her, yields,
struggles . . . yields again at last, for hers is all the force of body
and of soul: it is his part to be consumed in her--

"I kiss you now, dear Ottima, now and now!
This way? Will you forgive me--be once more
My great queen?"

Glorious in her victory, she demands that the hair which she had loosed
in the moment of recalling their wild joys he now shall bind thrice
about her brow--

"Crown me your queen, your spirit's arbitress,
Magnificent in sin. Say that!"

So she bids him; so he crowns her--

"My great white queen, my spirit's arbitress,
Magnificent . . ."

--but ere the exacted phrase is said, there sounds without the voice of
a girl singing.

"The year's at the spring,
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hill-side's dew-pearled;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn:
God's in his heaven--
All's right with the world!"

(_Pippa passes._)

* * * * *

Like her own lark on the wing, she has dropped this song to earth,
unknowing and unheeding where its beauty shall alight; it is the impulse
of her glad sweet heart to carol out its joy--no