The Turret

Millions of years ago, on another planet far off where

different constellations hang, once a poet, forgetting

sorrow, walked in summer along a white cliff high above

the sea with a boy beside him. And the boy said, "There

in that house, before I lost my father and fell into pov-

erty, formerly I lived, and in that turret with its little

window I passed happy hours." And as he listened the

poet felt deep in his heart a mystic pain such as he had

never felt in looking back upon the lost palaces of his

own youth. Afterwards the boy was drowned at sea,

Scented Leaves

and the heart of the poet was drowned in care; yet to

the end of his troubled life he never saw in stone or pic-

ture, neither heard nor read of, a turret like that one,

but over him there stole the same mystic sorrow, like

the breath of flowers out of a hidden garden, like a chord

of music from passionate harpstrings away in some im-

mortal world.

THE: WORD

The first time the emperor Han heard a certain Word

he said, "It is strange." The second time he said, "It

is divine." The third time he said, "Let the speaker be

put to death."

Allen Upward.