The stream has reached the sea, and
once more the great mother holds her son
against her breast.
*****
Fare you well, people of Orphalese.
This day has ended.
It is closing upon us even as the
water-lily upon its own tomorrow.
What was given us here we shall keep,
And if it suffices not, then again must
we come together and together stretch
our hands unto the giver.
Forget not that I shall come back to
you.
A little while, and my longing shall
gather dust and foam for another body.
A little while, a moment of rest upon
the wind, and another woman shall bear
me.
Farewell to you and the youth I have
spent with you.
It was but yesterday we met in a
dream.
You have sung to me in my
aloneness, and I of your longings have
built a tower in the sky.
But now our sleep has fled and our dream
is over, and it is no longer dawn.
The noontide is upon us and our half
waking has turned to fuller day, and we
must part.
If in the twilight of memory we should
meet once more, we shall speak again
together and you shall sing to me a
deeper song.
And if our hands should meet in another
dream we shall build another tower in
the sky.
*****
So saying he made a signal to the
seamen, and straightway they weighed
anchor and cast the ship loose from its
moorings, and they moved eastward.
And a cry came from the people as from a
single heart, and it rose into the dusk
and was carried out over the sea like a
great trumpeting.
Only Almitra was silent, gazing after
the ship until it had vanished into
the mist.
And when all the people were dispersed
she still stood alone upon the sea-wall,
remembering in her heart his saying,
“A little while, a moment of rest upon
the wind, and another woman shall bear
me.”
[Illustration: 0134]