leaning against the door, while the Mediterranean floated up her
waves, and filled the waste with sound. There didst thou see thine
ancient fishermen rising ere the dawn from their bed of dry seaweed,
and heardst them stirring, drowsy, among their fishing gear, and
heardst them tell their dreams.

Or again thou wouldst wander with dusty feet through the ways that
the dust makes silent, while the breath of the kine, as they were
driven forth with the morning, came fresh to thee, and the trailing
dewy branch of honeysuckle struck sudden on thy cheek. Thou wouldst
see the Dawn awake in rose and saffron across the waters, and Etna,
grey and pale against the sky, and the setting crescent would dip
strangely in the glow, on her way to the sea. Then, methinks, thou
wouldst murmur, like thine own Simaetha, the love-lorn witch,
"Farewell, Selene, bright and fair; farewell, ye other stars, that
follow the wheels of the quiet Night." Nay, surely it was in such
an hour that thou didst behold the girl as she burned the laurel
leaves and the barley grain, and melted the waxen image, and called
on Selene to bring her lover home. Even so, even now, in the
islands of Greece, the setting Moon may listen to the prayers of
maidens. "Bright golden Moon, that now art near the waters, go thou
and salute my lover, he that stole my love, and that kissed me,
saying "Never will I leave thee." And lo, he hath left me as men
leave a field reaped and gleaned, like a church where none cometh to
pray, like a city desolate."

So the girls still sing in Greece, for though the Temples have
fallen, and the wandering shepherds sleep beneath the broken columns
of the god's house in Selinus, yet these ancient fires burn still to
the old divinities in the shrines of the hearths of the peasants.