198 



Shadowings 



and of ghostliest delicacy, life illimitable, yet 

 ephemeral, flaming and fading in ceaseless alter- 

 nation over the whole round of waters even to 

 the sky-line, above which, in the vaster abyss, 

 other countless lights were throbbing with other 

 spectral colors. 



Watching, I wondered and I dreamed. I 

 thought of the Ultimate Ghost revealed in that 

 scintillation tremendous of Night and Sea; 

 quickening above me, in systems aglow with 

 awful fusion of the past dissolved, with vapor 

 of the life again to be; quickening also be- 

 neath me, in meteor-gushings and constellations 

 and nebulosities of colder fire, till I found my- 

 self doubting whether the million ages of the sun- 

 star could really signify, in the flux of perpetual 

 dissolution, anything more than the momentary 

 sparkle of one expiring noctiluca. 



Even with the doubt, the vision changed. I 

 saw no longer the sea of the ancient East, with 

 its shudderings of fire, but that Flood whose 

 width and depth and altitude are one with the 

 Night of Eternity, the shoreless and timeless 

 Sea of Death and Birth. And the luminous 

 haze of a hundred millions of suns, the Arch 



