“You look like one of the lotos-eaters,” said Cecil, glancing at him.
“It is precisely what I feel like,” he said, with a smile. “Perhaps it is because you have been giving me
‘Music that gentlier on the spirit lies
Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes.’
I remember so well how you read that to me after I had been ill.”
She took a thin little red volume from the bookshelves beside her and turned over the leaves. He bent forward to look over her, and together they read the first part of the poem.
“It is Norway,” he said. “What could better describe it?”
“A land of streams! Some like a downward smoke,
Slow dripping veils of thinnest lawn did go;
And some through wavering lights and shadows broke,