ON TH E SOUTHERN COAST
parasols, draw the eye away from the traffic of life to
its beauty, and small craft with sails bellying to the
breeze, speed across the turbid waters. All that is here
is new, deriving but little of its charm from history
or old association. Its interest is vital, of the present.
Thus as the pageant discloses itself, and calicoed
Chinamen, cottoned Coringhi, and silken Burman play
their parts upon the sunlit stage, we slip our anchor at
Rangoon, and make with the tide for the ocean.
THE NIRVANA Of1 THE NIGHT
Night comes, and with it a sea of snow under the
trail of the flaming moon. A warm-lipped wind from
the south, sensuous and caressing, the very breath of
some mystic ardour of Nature, plays over the restless
face of the sea. On the white awnings of the. ship,
the dark stamped outline of the cordage makes fantastic
patterns, so clear that the pattern seems an inalienable
part of the fabric ; yet in each line there is the tremor of
separate life. Time and space loom infinite on a borderless
horizon, and
t h e ship moves
•over the trackless5
seas, as if impelled
b y some- secret,
«universal spirit of
l i f e . The dark
man at the wheel,
yellow o v a l s of
light from the compass
playing on his
f a c e ; the lonely
o f f i c e r on the
bridge; the droning
voice of the
watchman ; the
clang of the ship’s
bells ; seem klike the simulacra of some hidden reality,
phantoms of something else that is.
DAY UPON THE THRESHOLD
Dawn breaks off the Tavoy coast, a. symphony in
purple, f he sea, the Moscos islands, the mountains of
the coast, the violet sky still lit by the full orb of the'
489
TAVOY RIVER