There is a lake that I have seen in a land of the gods, and it is quite small, though it has a long name; its waters are just wavering ripples of liquid light, although the little lake is shallow now and full of great moss. The white lilies float on its surface like stars in the night, sweet promises of the dawn of a golden age that shall blossom again from those old roots buried in antiquity. And on the shores of this mountain lake the very rocks are radiant with the magic life that fills the atmosphere, lending fresh lustre to the blended hues of purple, green and gold, of heather-bloom and gorse and marvellous moss and lichens wrapping the rocks in soft luxuriance.
And when the sun shines there, one feels the unseen hosts hovering around in the tremulous air; their songs are the hymn of life welling up from the depths of tether, where the gods live and work. All up the sides of those precipitous mountains, on every ledge of rock, in every cleft, trees, heather and mosses cling and cluster till the rock seems bursting into songs of joy and love; so rich the spirit of life is there. And high above are marvellous caves with groves of fairy dwarfling trees at every entrance, where none but birds and those who come in dreams, or after death, floating adown the valley in their bodies of light, can enter.
Here is the resting place for weary souls. This is fairy land, and yet it is on earth and in the 19th century.
There is another lake in a land that has fallen asleep. The sun of its glory went down in a blood-red glare of stormy hate and the hand of a fierce, wild spirit of war seems to have gripped the land and held it bound choked in the clutch of the dead Past. For around on the mountain slopes and rocky precipices no single tree or shrub is seen, but only the mosses, lichens and heather toiling bravely to redeem the curse of barrenness that has fallen on the land, and here and there dwarf clumps of gorse make golden lights amid the purple gloom, and when the sun shines there a sense of awe and stillness seems to pervade the place and the deep shadows of the mountain gorges are like the shades of destiny lingering round the battlegrounds of man's iniquities; and yet the very gloom and barrenness and the dark shuddering surface of the lake are themes of wondrous melody chaunted by Nature in a voiceless harmony. The song of battle rings among the mountains and the throbbing of the harps still pulses through the air that rushes by so fitfully; while ever from the depths of those forbidding mountains comes a deep-toned echo of the ancient hymn of Love and Life and utter peacefulness. That was the song of Nature in a golden age long past and sleeping deep within the bosom of the Eternal Mother, till here again the dawn shall break and here again the singing of the Bards reborn shall reawaken the slumbering heart of Love in this forgotten home of Mystery. I sat thinking of these places I had visited and weaving their memories into strange fantastic schemes of color and form when an old friend came to see me, trying to sell me some Eastern embroideries; that was his trade and he knew the salesman's art and could tell wonderful Arab and Persian tales in his broken English to beguile the buyer into a suitable frame of mind for the purchase of some piece of work. I looked with interest at his stock of old embroideries till one stray piece of Japanese work caught my eye, and as he held it up there sparkled from it all the fresh, bright joy of life and breath of nature that was lingering in the memory of the little mountain lake I spoke of first. I hardly saw the pattern or the method of the work; certainly there were figures, flowers, and birds or dragons, I forget but all the robe was just one harmony of rippling color and form that seemed to my delighted fancy to be accompanied by strange music and a perfume of sweet heather in bloom, and then I understood that in that robe I saw a truer rendering of that phase of nature, mirrored in my memory of a mountain lake, than a picture painted on the spot by any realistic landscape painter could have given. And I began to talk of that first visit to the lake, and all my thoughts and dreams of the great gods, and he in turn told me strange stories of his wanderings and of his Sheik, his master and his mystic dreams and visions, for he hailed me as a brother dervish reverencing the Supreme as Unity in all this world's diversity. So we talked on until the daylight faded and the evening glow came through the low-arched western window of the great rambling chamber in the roof that served me for a studio, and the dark eyes of my old Arab friend glistened with tears of love and sorrow as he told how he had wandered from the Master's path, but ever seeking to return, looked forward to the great reunion of all lovers of the One Beloved and to the promised dawn that is to come after the terrible night of storm of massacre is past. These things his Sheik had prophesied to him even in his youth, and he himself in visions of the night had seen the coming of the evil days and of the promised dawn. So in the deepening shadow of the place we parted, counting ourselves the richer in our poverty for words of wisdom and each other's sympathy.