the desolation was complete, across the wasted valley where the
starveling cattle scarcely longed to browse, came the dreadful
chariot--and Persephone. The day of the prisoner of Hades had
dawned; and as the sun flamed slowly up to light her thwarted eyes
the world sprang into blossom at her feet.

We can never be too Pagan when we are truly Christian, and the old
myths are eternal truths held fast in the Church's net. Prometheus
fetched fire from Heaven, to be slain forever in the fetching; and
lo, a Greater than Prometheus came to fire the cresset of the
Cross. Demeter waits now patiently enough. Persephone waits, too,
in the faith of the sun she cannot see: and every lamp lit carries
on the crusade which has for its goal a sunless, moonless, city
whose light is the Light of the world.


"Lume e lassu, che visibile face
lo creatore a quella creatura,
che solo in lui vedere ha la sua pace."


Immediately outside my window is a lime tree--a little black
skeleton of abundant branches--in which sparrows congregate to
chirp and bicker. Farther away I have a glimpse of graceful
planes, children of moonlight and mist; their dainty robes, still
more or less unsullied, gleam ghostly in the gaslight athwart the
dark. They make a brave show even in winter with their feathery
branches and swinging tassels, whereas my little tree stands stark
and uncompromising, with its horde of sooty sparrows cockney to the
last tail feather, and a pathetic inability to look anything but