Mystic spring of vapor: Opiate odor of colors: Alas—I’m not all of me! Wanton fragrances, dewy, dim, Curl out from my drowsy soul; Wrapping mists about its breast. I dwell alone, Like one-eyed star, In frightened, darksome, willow threads. In world of moan, My soul is stagnant dawn— Dawn; alas, dawn my soul is! Ah, dawn—close fringed curtain Of night is stealing up:—God— Demon—Light— Darkness—oh! Desert of No More I want;— World of silence, bodiless sadness tenanted; Stillness. YONE NOGUCHI. IN RE OPHELIA. [Hales vs. Petit, Plowden’s Reports, 1st Vol., P. 253.] I disagree with many good people and count not William Shakespeare a demi-god. Rather would I think of him as a man—a toiler; a master-workman, selecting from the folio-forests the fine grained woods with which to build that matchless instrument whose melodies still sing a lullaby to our life’s regrets. Using but the best of the forest, leaving the lumber for us, the crude makers of discordant fiddles. I like to dream of him as at the Inns reading Plowden’s late Reports; gibing perhaps at the Year Books’ vile Latin, or at Littleton’s unintelligible jumble. But best of all I love that quiet midsummer’s evening when the friendly barrister from over the way drops in to chat with the master. (A sergeant, also, is sometimes there, but he is too dignified for all occasions and I never allow him to talk much at any time.) The gossip from the City to the Hall is exchanged. The barrister from over the way amusingly chronicles Sir Edward Coke’s chagrin at his late granted absolution—Sir Edward’s marriage ceremony having been irregular “evidently,” as the absolution read, “through ignorance of the law.” The twilight deepens and the young man seated apart near the window lays aside the book he has been reading. The master takes it up and idly turns the pages. Many of the triumphs and defeats there chronicled are very real ones to him. He pauses a moment at Lady Hales’ case. The funereal rows of black type awaken memories of his first days at Westminster, when with lips apart he stared at the six sergeants—two for the Lady and four for the Crown—as they delivered their intricate arguments. As the master ends his solemn recital of the Lady’s struggle for her own, the youngster near the window laughs. And we to this day laugh with him when we hear the case retried by poor mad Ophelia’s grave-diggers.