The Young Queens 



milk, who with folded arms and head 

 bent forward await the hour of awakening. 

 In their uniform tombs, that, isolated, 

 become nearly transparent, they seem 

 almost like hoary gnomes, lost in deep 

 thought, or legions of virgins whom the 

 folds of the shroud have contorted, who 

 are buried in hexagonal prisms that some 

 inflexible geometrician has multiplied to 

 the verge of delirium. 



Over the entire area that the vertical 

 walls enclose, and in the midst of this 

 growing world that so soon shall trans- 

 form itself, that shall four or five times in 

 succession assume fresh vestments, and 

 then spin its own winding-sheet in the 

 shadow, hundreds of workers are dancing 

 and flapping their wings. They appear 

 thus to generate the necessary heat, and 

 accomplish some other object besides that 

 is still more obscure ; for this dance of 

 theirs contains some extraordinary move- 



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