Frontispiece

A Draught of the Blue

Together with

An Essence of the Dusk

Translated from the Original Manuscripts

By

F. W. Bain

G. P. Putnam's Sons
New York and London
The Knickerbocker Press

COPYRIGHT, 1906
BY
F. W. BAIN

(For "An Essence of the Dusk")

Published, January, 1907
Reprinted, March, 1907; September, 1908
July, 1910; September, 1911


The Knickerbocker Press, New York

Contents

I A Draught of the Blue

II An Essence of the Dusk

A Draught of the Blue

Translated from the Original Manuscript

Ah! lotus infinite! ah! wild sweet Blue!
Sense, in thy azure ocean dipped, must die.

Desiderio

Introduction

The sun goes down, for those alone, whostand on a revolving sphere: and so, inNature's universal life, Death is but a dissolvingview, a word without a meaning: real only tothe accidental unit, to whose local andmomentary combination it sets a term. Death is athing of nought, phenomenal, kaleidoscopic:a juggle of the Mother of Illusion, Prakriti orMáyá, whose magic scene not only never dies,but like her own wild animals, sleeps evenwith an open eye. You never catch hernapping. And often, when you think that youhave done it, she winks at you, just as it wereto show you your mistake. As sometimes, ona hot midsummer day, when the delicate bluesmoke from cottage chimneys rises straightinto the air, and Nature holds her breath: youthink, she is asleep: and all at once, therecomes a little whisper, and a ripple passesover all the golden ears of corn, and in anothermoment, all is still. Or on a cliff thatoverhangs a glassy sea, you lie and dream, andthink, the very water sleeps: and then, asudden change of colour flushes the ocean opalfor only a single instant, and is gone. Or ina wood at noon, you listen to the silence, anda rustle suddenly quivers in the trees, and diesaway. Murmurs and echoes: moments andemotions of the pulses of the world: hints andindications, still, small voices more significantthan storms, of the never-sleeping thrill andthrob of universal action.

"Every tremor gravitation excites in anyplanet is immediately transmitted to thefarthest limits of the system, in oscillationscorresponding in their periods with the causes thatproduce them, like sympathetic notes in music,or vibrations from the deep tones of anorgan.... The human frame may beregarded as an elastic system, the differentparts of which are capable of receiving thetremors of elastic media, and of vibrating inunison with