The picture it made, being
so ill-seasoned, led you to think of August drought when the
grasshopper stills itself in the weeds and the smell of grass is hot
in the nostrils and every bird holds its beak open and its wings
lifted like cooling lattices alongside its breast. In these veils of
dust swarms of frost crystals sported--dead midgets of the dead
North. Except crystal and dust and wind, naught moved out there; no
field mouse, no hare nor lark nor little shielded dove. In the naked
trees of the pasture the crow kept his beak as unseen as the owl's;
about the cedars of the yard no scarlet feather warmed the day.
The house on the hill--one of the houses whose spirit had been blown
into the amber of the poet's song--sent festal smoke out of its
chimneys all day long. At intervals the radiant faces of children
appeared at the windows, hanging wreaths of evergreens; or their
figures flitted to and fro within as they wove garlands on the walls
for the Christmas party. At intervals some servant with head and
shoulders muffled in a bright-colored shawl darted trippingly from the
house to the cabins in the yard and from the cabins back to the
house--the tropical African's polar dance between fire and fire.
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