The dome of heaven was tinged with pale hyacinthine blue, and the olive-trees reflected its calm on their silver locks, which concealed the painful contortions of their black trunks. The clouds on the rocky peaks were not yet clothed in purple, but in robes of more delicate hue, making them droop; yet one here and there raised a proud head among her companions and aspired to a crown of stars.
“In the meantime compose thy music,” pursued the Dæmon, “out of the wonderful things which are born of affinity, and of the relations between three perfect forms contemplated sincerely. In their unison and surroundings there is a wonderful language which is already as comprehensible to thee as if thou hadst created it. Out of any one of their outlines thou canst make the axis of a world. They seem to impart to thee the joy of continual creation and continual discovery, to help thee to complete thy harmony with a part of thyself unexpectedly revealed. They seem to pour into thee again the life which ages ago they received from thee. Hadst thou not enjoyed them even before they smiled on thee? As thou stoodest in silence beside them, was not thy soul within thee heavy as a cloud?”
“Oh despot,” I said, and felt my soul yearn with infinite desire towards the garden from which the harmonious twilight was bearing me away. “Oh despot, it is true; as I stood in silence beside them, I felt stronger emotion than if I had loosed their hair, or pressed my lips on their beautiful necks, and I am still full of it. Yet, as the shadows fall, I would fain return there secretly; and invisible to the eye, I would lean my head on those virginal bosoms and tarry there a long while, because I think that from those bosoms there would flow over me in the cool shadow a great sweetness and a great sorrow which I shall never know.”
III
“... A sedere, con le dita delle mani insieme tessute, tenendovi dentro il ginocchio stanco.”
Leonardo da Vinci
“Dov è più sentimento, li è più martirio.”
Ibid
And I led them among the flowers.
They listened with visible emotion to the infinite melodies of springtime, bending or turning sometimes towards their own shadows, which preceded or followed them like blue figures prostrated to kiss the earth. A confused feeling of the joy of liberty and hope shone at times in their dazzled eyes; a voiceless word at times unclosed their lips, and likened them to the brims of overflowing goblets. And when they paused, I thought with inward intoxication of the fulness of life which was suffocating them.