Blue vision of depth lost in height,—sea and sky interblending through
luminous haze. The day is of spring, and the hour morning.
Only sky and sea,—one azure enormity... In the fore, ripples are
catching a silvery light, and threads of foam are swirling. But a
little further off no motion is visible, nor anything save color: dim
warm blue of water widening away to melt into blue of air. Horizon
there is none: only distance soaring into space,—infinite concavity
hollowing before you, and hugely arching above you,—the color deepening
with the height. But far in the midway-blue there hangs a faint, faint
vision of palace towers, with high roofs horned and curved like
moons,—some shadowing of splendor strange and old, illumined by a
sunshine soft as memory.
...What I have thus been trying to describe is a kakémono,—that is to
say, a Japanese painting on silk, suspended to the wall of my
alcove;—and the name of it is SHINKIRŌ, which signifies “Mirage.” But
the shapes of the mirage are unmistakable. Those are the glimmering
portals of Hōrai the blest; and those are the moony roofs of the Palace
of the Dragon-King;—and the fashion of them (though limned by a
Japanese brush of to-day) is the fashion of things Chinese, twenty-one
hundred years ago...