There came a breath of something in the east. It was neither wind nor
warmth. It was light before it is light to the eyes of men. Slowly
and slowly it grew, until, like the dawning soul in the face of one
who lies in a faint, the life of light came back to the world, and at
last the whole huge hollow hemisphere of rushing sea and cloud-flecked
sky lay like a great empty heart, waiting, in conscious glory of the
light, for the central glory, the coming lord of day. And in the whole
crystalline hollow, gleaming and flowing with delight, yet waiting for
more, the Psyche was the only lonely life-bearing thing--the one cloudy
germ-spot afloat in the bosom of the great roc-egg of sea and sky,
whose sheltering nest was the universe with its walls of flame.
Florimel woke, rose, went on deck, and for a moment was fresh born. It
was a fore-scent--even this could not be called a foretaste, of the
kingdom of heaven; but Florimel never thought of the kingdom of heaven,
the ideal of her own existence. She could however half appreciate this
earthly outbreak of its glory, this incarnation of truth invisible.
Round her, like a thousand doves, clamoured with greeting wings the
joyous sea-wind. Up came a thousand dancing billows, to shout their
good morning. Like a petted animal, importunate for play, the breeze
tossed her hair and dragged at her fluttering garments, then rushed
in the Psyche’s sails, swelled them yet deeper, and sent her dancing
over the dancers. The sun peered up like a mother waking and looking
out on her frolicking children. Black shadows fell from sail to sail,
slipping and shifting, and one long shadow of the Psyche herself
shot over the world to the very gates of the west, but held her not,
for she danced and leaned and flew as if she had but just begun her
corantolavolta fresh with the morning, and had not been dancing all the
livelong night over the same floor. Lively as any new-born butterfly,
not like a butterfly’s, flitting and hovering, was her flight, for
still, like one that longed, she sped and strained and flew. The joy
of bare life swelled in Florimel’s bosom. She looked up, she looked
around, she breathed deep. The cloudy anger that had rushed upon her
like a watching tiger the moment she waked, fell back, and left her
soul a clear mirror to reflect God’s dream of a world. She turned, and
saw Malcolm at the tiller, and the cloudy wrath sprang upon her. He
stood composed and clear and cool as the morning, without sign of doubt
or conscience of wrong, now peeping into the binnacle, now glancing
at the sunny sails, where swayed across and back the dark shadows of
the rigging, as the cutter leaned and rose, like a child running and
staggering over the multitudinous and unstable hillocks. She turned
from him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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