Not a maid can brush away
Morning dew-drops from the spray,
But she feels a sweet unrest
Wooingly disturb her breast.
As the breezes fresh and cool
From the lilies on the pool,
Sweet with all the fragrance there,
Play, like lovers, with her hair.”
Griffith.
Surpassing “the Seasons” in dignity and elegance, “the Cloud Messenger,” by the same author, contains some fine flights of fancy. It tells how an inferior god, banished for twelve months to a sacred forest and thus separated from a wife whom he fondly loves, commits to a passing cloud a message for his goddess. He directs its imaginary journey through the sky, over forests and hills, to the city of the gods. There it will easily distinguish his wife, whom he paints to the cloud in glowing colors as the “first, best work of the Creator’s hand,” mourning over their separation.