"Euston!" clamored the voices outside; "Euston!"
The carriage door opened, admitting a flood of sound, and a porter stood regarding us. The sounds of doors slamming, and the hoof-clatter of cab-horses, and behind these things the featureless remote roar of the London cobblestones, came to my ears. A truckload of lighted lamps blazed along the platform.
"A darkness, a flood of darkness that opened and spread and blotted out all things."
"Any luggage, sir?" said the porter.
"And that was the end?" I asked.
He seemed to hesitate. Then, almost inaudibly, he answered, "No."
"You mean?"
"I couldn't get to her. She was there on the other side of the temple. And then"
"Yes," I insisted. "Yes?"
"Nightmares," he cried; "nightmares indeed! My God! Great birds that fought and tore."
The Evening Star
By FRANCIS HARD
The ruddy sun has fled to west, and his diurnal flight
Has reft away the shining day, and given us the night;
The woods are still, and on the hill is dying fast the light.
With cheerful gleam now trembles forth a radiance in the sky,
Shines from afar the evening star, resplendent in the sky;
With love aglow, on Earth below she beams with lustrous eye.
Above the trees, above the hills, above the western sea,
Far, far above, the star of love moves on in ecstasy,
And the trembling light of the eye of night descends like balm to me.
The pallid moon is not so bright, and she weeps in her throne on high;
She is not so bright as the gorgeous light of that darling of the sky,
As the blue, blue light of the eye of night, where it sparkles across the sky.
The silver stars are now aglow, and they twinkle ceaselessly;
Stationed on high, they throng the sky, a splendid company,
An escort throng, the whole night long, afloat in a purple sea.
And I tread no longer the dusky Earth, I am floating up there in the sky;
I am floating above with the star that I love, in the violet deeps of the sky;
Far, far above, in the realms of love, in the depths of the purple sky.
