X HOW cool is the moonless summer night, how sweet After the noise and the dizzy choking heat! The bloodless lamps look down upon their own Green image in the polished roadway thrown, And onward and out of sight the great road runs, Smooth and dark as a river of calm bronze. Freedom and widening space: his life expands, Ready, it seems, to burst the iron bands Of self, to fuse with other lives and be Not one but the world, no longer “I” but “She.” See, like the dolorous memory Of happy times in misery, An aged hansom fills the street With the superannuated beat Of hollow hoofs and bells that chime Out of another quieter time. “Good-night,” the last kiss, “and God bless you, my dear.” So, she was gone, she who had been so near, So breathing-warm—soft mouth and hands and hair— A moment since. Had she been really there, Close at his side, and had he kissed her? It seemed Unlikely as something somebody else had dreamed And talked about at breakfast, being a bore: Improbable, unsubstantial, dim, yet more Real than the rest of life; real as the blaze Of a sudden-seen picture, as the lightning phrase With which the poet-gods strangely create Their brief bright world beyond the reach of fate. Yet he could wonder now if he had kissed Her or his own loved thoughts. Did she exist Now she was history and safely stowed Down in the past? There (with a conscious smile), There let her rest eternal. And meanwhile, Lamp-fringed towards meeting parallels, the road Stretched out and out, and the old weary horse, Come from the past, went jogging his homeward course Uphill through time to some demoded place, On ghostly hoofs back to the safe Has-Been:— But fact returns insistent as remorse; Uphill towards Hampstead, back to the year of grace Nineteen hundred and seventeen. XI BETWEEN the drawing of the blind And being aware of yet another day . . . PRINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBB LTD., EDINBURGH TRANSCRIBER NOTES Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Inconsistencies in punctuation have been maintained. A cover was created for this eBook. [The end of _Leda_, by Aldous Huxley.] End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Leda, by Aldous Huxley