much as in those old days when we were such passionate monotheists of
the beautiful? Alas! We are priests no more, are we even lovers? But we
are wonderful connoisseurs.

It is our souls.




IX

THE SNOWS OF YESTER-YEAR


_Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?_ As I transcribe once more that
ancient sigh, perhaps the most real sigh in all literature, it is high
mid-summer, and the woodland surrounding the little cabin in which I am
writing lies in a trance of green and gold, hot and fragrant and dizzy
with the whirring of cicadas, under the might of the July sun. Bees buzz
in and out through my door, and sometimes a butterfly flits in, flutters
a while about my bookshelves, and presently is gone again, in search of
sweets more to his taste than those of the muses, though Catullus is
there, with

Songs sweeter than wild honey dripping down,
Which once in Rome to Lesbia he sang.

As I am caught by the dream-drowsy spell of the hot murmuring afternoon,
and my eyes rest on the thick vines clustering over the rocks, and the
lush grasses and innumerable underbrush, so spendthrift in their