ibly
the water of the river sloughed its thick, viscous gleam, and swiftly
emitted and withdrew, stray, pearly reflections of the changes
occurring in the heavenly tints.

In the east there was rising, and hanging suspended over the black
spears of the pine forest, a thin pink mist the sensuous hue of which
was glowing ever brighter, and assuming a density ever greater, and
standing forth more boldly and clearly, even as a whisper of timid
prayer merges into a song of exultant thankfulness. Another moment, and
the spiked tops of the pines blazed into points of red fire resembling
festival candles in a sanctuary.

Next, an unseen hand threw over the water, drew along its surface, a
transparent and many-coloured net of silk. This was the morning breeze,
herald of dawn, as with a coating of tissue-like, silvery scales it
rippled the river until the eye grew weary of trying to follow the play
of gold and mother-of-pearl and purple and bluish-green reflected from
the sun-renovated heavens.

Next, like a fan there unfolded themselves the first sword-shaped beams
of day, with their tips blindingly white; while simultaneously one
seemed to hear descending from an illimitable height a dense sound-wave
of silver bells, a sound-wave advancing triumphantly to greet the sun
as his roseate rim became visible over the forest like the rim of a cup
that, filled with the essence of life, was about to empty its contents
upon the earth, and to pour a bounteous flood of creative puissance
upon the marshes whence a reddish vapour as of incense was arising.
Meanwhile on the more precipitous of the two banks some of the trees
near the river's margin were throwing soft green shadows over the
water, while gilt-like dew was sparkling on the herbage, and birds were
awakening, and as a white gull skimmed the water's surface on level
wings, the pale shadow of those wings followed the bird over the tinted
expanse, while the sun, suspended in flame behind the forest, like the
Imperial bird of the fairy-tale, rose higher and higher into the
greenish-blue zenith, until silvery Venus, expiring, herself looked
like a bird.

Here and there on the yellow strip of sand by the river's margin,
long-legged snipe were scurrying about. Two fishermen were rocking in a
boat in the steamer's wash as they hauled their tackle. Floating from
the shore there began to reach us such vocal sounds of morning as the
crowing of cocks, the lowing of cattle, and the persis