or whether all the world shall end tonight." And there sang all those
whose notes are known to human ears, as well as those whose far more
numerous notes have been never heard by man.

To these a rainy day had been as an era of war that should desolate
continents during all the lifetime of a man.

And there came out also from the dark and steaming jungle to behold and
rejoice in the Sun the huge and lazy butterflies. And they danced, but
danced idly, on the ways of the air, as some haughty queen of distant
conquered lands might in her poverty and exile dance, in some encampment
of the gipsies, for the mere bread to live by, but beyond that would never
abate her pride to dance for a fragment more.

And the butterflies sung of strange and painted things, of purple orchids
and of lost pink cities and the monstrous colours of the jungle's decay.
And they, too, were among those whose voices are not discernible by human
ears. And as they floated above the river, going from forest to forest,
their splendour was matched by the inimical beauty of the birds who darted
out to pursue them. Or sometimes they settled on the white and wax-like
blooms of the plant that creeps and clambers about the trees of the
forest; and their purple wings flashed out on the great blossoms as, when
the caravans go from Nurl to Thace, the gleaming silks flash out upon the
snow, where the crafty merchants spread them one by one to astonish the
mountaineers of the Hills of Noor.

But upon men and beasts the sun sent drowsiness. The river monsters along
the river's marge lay dormant in the slime. The sailors pitched a
pavilion, with golden tassels, for the captain upon the deck, and then
went, all but the helmsman, under a sail that they had hung as an awning