Summer as one in this — that none knows whence the 

 Clouds. one or the other is come, or where any has 

 the last excellence or differs save in the vibra- 

 tion of ecstasy, or whither the one or the 

 other is gone, when the moment, on whose 

 wings it came or on whose brows it stood 

 revealed, is no longer Eternity speaking the 

 language of Time, but the silence of what is 

 already timeless and no more. 



It has been said, less wisely than disdainfully, 

 that the chief element of beauty is destroyed 

 when one knows the secret of semblance. 

 Clouds, then, are forfeit in loveliness when 

 one knows the causes of their transformation, 

 their superb illusion ? Not so. Has the rose 

 lost in beauty, has she relinquished fragrance, 

 for all that we have learned of her blind roots, 

 the red ichor in her petals, the green pigment 

 in her stem, her hunger that must be fed in 

 coarse earth, her thirst that must be quenched 

 in rain and dew, her desire that must mate 

 with light ? Is the rainbow the less a lovely 

 mystery because we know that it is compact 

 of the round, colourless raindrops such as fall 

 upon us in any shower? Is the blue of an 

 unclouded sky the less poignant for us if we 

 know that the sunlight which inhabits it is 

 there, not the yellow or red or suffused white 

 which we discern, but itself an ineffable azure ; 



172 



