MINSTREL WEATHER 



with the hibiscus hedges and the dropping 

 yellow fruit. Down the hill and over 

 cobblestones, pursued by music and laugh- 

 ter, ministered to by odors of the lemon 

 blossom, he whom sleep leads here may 

 go toward a lake of fluent amethyst. The 

 way is past the market place where brown 

 women crouch by baskets of brilliant wares 

 and venders of glistening lizards sit drow- 

 sily bent, and then at a step the forest 

 dense and brooding is above him and its 

 low boughs sweep the ripple of the lake. 

 Immense leaves hang like curtains, and 

 among them men with unquiet eyes move 

 and hold monotoned speech while they 

 hew sparkling rock into monstrous shapes. 

 They are circling round a pit. They cast 

 in ornaments of opal and dark gold and 

 garlands of venomous forest growths, gray 

 and blood-red, tied with withered vines. 

 Cries come from the pit, but the chant 

 never stops. 



Marching from a stronghold far up on 

 a mountain of cedars, men in mail come 

 at dusk with standards flickering crimson, 

 fringed with gold, down to a valley full 

 of blossomed iris where there is a wide 

 pool with torches at its rim. Their flare 



176] 



