whole world who can sing like that?... And the form
of the singer flickers and dims;--and the house, and the lawn, and all
visible shapes of things tremble and swim before me. Yet instinctively
I fear that man;--I almost hate him; and I feel myself flushing with
anger and shame because of his power to move me thus...

"He made you cry," Robert compassionately observes, to my further
confusion,--as the harper strides away, richer by a gift of sixpence
taken without thanks... "But I think he must be a gipsy. Gipsies are
bad people--and they are wizards... Let us go back to the wood."

We climb again to the pines, and there squat down upon the sun-flecked
grass, and look over town and sea. But we do not play as before: the
spell of the wizard is strong upon us both... "Perhaps he is a goblin,"
I venture at last, "or a fairy?" "No," says Robert,--"only a gipsy. But
that is nearly as bad. They steal children, you know."...

"What shall we do if he comes up here?" I gasp, in sudden terror at the
lonesomeness of our situation.

"Oh, he wouldn't dare," answers Robert--"not by daylight, you know."...

[Only yesterday, near the village of Takata, I noticed a flower which
the Japanese call by nearly the same name as we do: Himawari, "The
Sunward-turning;"--and over the space of forty years there thrilled
back to me the voice of that wandering harper,--

As the Sunflower turns on her god, when he sets,
The same look that she turned when he rose.

Again I saw the sun-flecked shadows on that far Welsh hill; and Robert
for a moment again stood beside me, with his girl's face and his curls
of gold. We were looking for fairy-rings... But all that existed of the
real Robert must long ago have suffered a sea-change into something
rich and strange... Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay
down his life for his friend...]

HORAI

Blue vision of depth lost in height,--sea and sky interblending through
luminous haze. The day is of spring, and the hour morning.

Only sky and sea,--one azure enormity... In the fore, ripples are
catching a silvery light, and threads of foam are swirling. But a
little further off no motion is visible, nor anything save color: dim
warm blue of water widening away to melt into blue of air. Horizon
there is none: only distance soaring into space,--infinite concavity
hollowing before you, and hugely arching above you,--the color
deepening with the height. But far in the midway