I watched the moon,—a new moon, yellow and curved like a young banana,—droop over the dreaming sea: there were sparklings like effervescence through the archway of stars,—perhaps the molecular motion of some Astral Thought. Then seemed to fall upon the world a hush like the hush of sanctuaries,—like that Silence of Secrets told of in the Bhagavad-Gita: the peace of the Immensities. In such hours fancies come to us like gusts of seawind,—as vast and pure; nay, sometimes vaster,—measureless like the interspaces between sun and sun. For it is only in these voiceless moments that the heavens speak to us,—telling of mysteries beyond the luminous signaling of astral deep unto astral deep, beyond the furthest burning of constellations; mysteries that shall still be mysteries when our day-star shall have yielded up his ghost of flame.—The death of a man; the death of a sun:—is the awful Universe affected any more by the last than by the first?
And with this question, the question of the morning returned, enigmatic as before,—bringing to me the indescribable, creeping, electrical sensation that we are said to feel especially when some heedless foot is treading the place of our future grave.
It was late when I sought sleep that night—my last Floridian night.
And I dreamed strange dreams.
First, I dreamed of a plant,—a plant with sombre cordiform leaves,—that bent away from the light toward me, and followed me persistently when I retreated from it; crawling like a pet reptile to get in front of me, and then rising up slowly, very slowly; stretching out to me, as with dumb affection, two helpless arms—two long leafy stems tipped with blood-colored flowers.
Then it seemed to me that I stood in a place of burial, and that, in some inexplicable way, I could observe the processes of that dark alchemy by which flesh is transmuted into leaf and fruit,—by which blood is transformed into blossom, as in the old Greek myths, and into the living substance also of those creatures, gem-winged, jewel-eyed, that feed upon the juices, the honey, and the fruit of graveyard flora. Then suddenly the mystery of the blonde name again came before me—this time upon a graven square of marble; and in a little while I thought I knew the story of the dead; for this impossible and nameless legend shaped itself in my sleep.
[VULTUR AURA]
June 2, 188-
... San Juan de los Pinos:—'Saint John of the Pines,' That was the name of the ancient fort. And in those days the names of the bastions also were names of the Evangelists and the Apostles.