of the sonnet entitled "Tezcotzinco", the fruit of a solitary excursion
to the ruins of Nezahualcoyotl's baths, in the hills beyond Tezcoco.
But even where there is no painting of definite Mexican scenes,
motives from the vast uplands with their cloud pageantry,
and from the palm-fringed, incandescent coasts, frequently recur in his verse.
For instance, he had not forgotten Mexico when he wrote in a volume
of the Comtesse de Noailles:

Be my companion under cool arcades
That frame some drowsy street and dazzling square,
Beyond whose flowers and palm-tree promenades
White belfries burn in the blue tropic air.

And even when the tropics were finally left behind,
he carried with him in his memory their profusion of colour,
an ever-ready palette on which to draw. Assuredly it was a fortunate chance
that took this lover of sunlight and space and splendor,
in his most receptive years, to regions where they superabound.
Perhaps, had he been confined to gloomier climates, he could not have written:

From a boy
I gloated on existence. Earth to me
Seemed all-sufficient, and my sojourn there
One trembling opportunity for joy.

But the same good fortune pursued him throughout. He seemed predestined
to environments of beauty. When, at fourteen, he left his Mexican home,
it was to go to the Hackley School at Tarrytown, N.Y., an institution
placed on a high hill overlooking that noblest of rivers, the Hudson,
and surrounded by a domain of its own, extending to many acres