ALACK ! alack ! How soon the year is past, the 

 days gone, the hours all too quickly flown except 

 when pain and sorrow break their speed and bid them 

 tarry in unwelcome slowness. 



The folding dusk of evening curtains the sky and 



PICTURES the spirit of the night rides in on great clouds 



of darkness, and real darkness enfolds ' my garden.' 

 I stir the logs upon the hearth into a blaze, not that 

 I need its light (for I shut my eyes that I may see 

 more clearly), but, somehow, that ruddy flickering 

 glow has a subtle influence which kindles memory, 

 and before my inner eyes float the pictures of ' my 

 garden.' 



I see a river bed, grey-boulder strewn, its sun- 

 shrunk stream a thread of whitened foam, that leaps 

 and hides in the wadi : on every side a bare, treeless 

 land, in colour ruddy chestnut-brown. Grouped by 

 the stream in patchy upright growth are oleander 



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