_Beyond the pleading lip, the reaching hand, Laughter and tear; Beyond the grief that none would understand; Beyond all fear. Dreams ended, beauty broken, Deeds done, and last words spoken, Quiet she lies._ _Far, far from our delirious dark and light, She finds her sleep. No more the noisy silences of night Shall hear her weep. The blossomed boughs break over Her holy breast to cover From any eyes. Till the stark dawn shall drink the latest star, So let her be. O Love and Beauty! She has wandered far And now comes home to thee._ A RUSSIAN NIGHT SPITALFIELDS AND STEPNEY The Russian quarter always saddens me. For one thing, it has associations which scratch my heart regularly every month when my affairs take me into those parts. Forgetting is the most wearisome of all pains to which we humans are subject; and for some of us there is so much to forget. For some of us there is Beatrice to forget, and Dora, and Christina, and the devastating loveliness of Isabel. For another thing, its atmosphere is so depressingly Slavonic. It is as dismal and as overdone as Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C sharp minor. How shall I give you the sharp flavour of it, or catch the temper of its streets? It seems impossible that one should ensnare its elusive spirit. Words may come, but they are words, hard and stiff-necked and pedestrian. One needs symbols and butterflies. * * * * * Beauty is a strange bird. Hither and thither she flies, and settles where she will; and men will say that she is found here and there--sometimes in Perugia, sometimes in Mayfair, sometimes in the Himalaya. I have known men who found her in the dark melancholy of Little Russia, and I can understand them. For beauty appears, too, in various guise; and some men adore her in silks and some in rags. There are girls in this quarter who will smite the heart out of you, whose beauty will cry itself into your very blood. White's Row and the fastnesses of Stepney do not produce many choice blooms; there are no lilies in these gardens of weeds. The girls are not romantic to regard or to talk with. They are not even clean. The secrets of their toilet are not known to me, but I doubt if soap and water ever appear in large quantities. And yet.... They walk or lounge, languorous and heavy-lidded, yet with a curious suggestion of smouldering fire in their drowsy gaze. Rich, olive-skinned faces they have, and hair either gloomy or brassy, and caressing voices with the lisp of Bethnal Green. You may see them about the streets which they have made their own, carrying loads of as enchanting curls as Murger's Mimi.