"Brothers! Master! look! The wonderful thing! And another, and yet another!" we heard Ananda calling. We looked and saw the holy blossom, the midnight flower. Oh, may the earth again put forth such beauty. It grew up from the snows with leaves of delicate crystal. A nimbus encircled each radiant bloom, a halo pale yet lustrous. I bowed over it in awe; and I heard Varunna say, "The earth indeed puts forth her signal fires, and the Devas sing their hymn. Listen!" We heard a music as of beautiful thoughts moving along the high places of the earth, full of infinite love and hope and yearning. "Be glad now, for one is born who has chosen the greater way. Kedar, Narayan, Ananda, farewell! Nay, no farther. It is a long way to return, and the child will tire." He went on and passed from our sight. But we did not return. We remained long, long in silence, looking at the sacred flower.------------- Vow, taken long ago, be strong in our hearts today. Here, where the pain is fiercer, to rest is more sweet. Here, where beauty dies away, it is more joy to be lulled in dream. Here, the good, the true, our hope seem but a madness born of ancient pain. Out of rest, dream, or despair may we arise, and go the way the great ones go. 1894 THE CHILDHOOD OF APOLLO It was long ago, so long that only the spirit of earth remembers truly. The old shepherd Admetus sat before the door of his hut waiting for his grandson to return. He watched with drowsy eyes the eve gather, and the woods and mountains grow dark over the isles--the isles of ancient Greece. It was Greece before its day of beauty, and day was never lovelier. The cloudy blossoms of smoke, curling upward from the valley, sparkled a while high up in the sunlit air, a vague memorial of the world of men below. From that, too, the color vanished, and those other lights began to shine which to some are the only lights of day. The skies dropped close upon the mountains and the silver seas like a vast face brooding with intentness. There was enchantment, mystery, and a living motion in its depths, the presence of all-pervading Zeus enfolding his starry children with the dark radiance of aether. "Ah!" murmured the old man, looking upward, "once it was living; once it spoke to me. It speaks not now; but it speaks to others I know--to the child who looks and longs and trembles in the dewy night. Why does he linger now? He is beyond his hour. Ah, there now are his footsteps!" A boy came up the valley driving the gray flocks which tumbled before him in the darkness. He lifted his young face for the shepherd to kiss. It was alight with ecstasy. Admetus looked at him with wonder. A golden and silvery light rayed all about the child, so that his delicate ethereal beauty seemed set in a star which followed his dancing footsteps. "How bright your eyes!" the old man said, faltering with sudden awe. "Why do your limbs shine with moonfire light?"