But else than these, no sign of death was seen throughout the isle.  Did men in Odo live for aye?  Was Ponce de Leon’s fountain there?  For near and far, you saw no ranks and files of graves, no generations harvested in winrows.  In Odo, no hard-hearted nabob slept beneath a gentle epitaph; no requiescat-in-pace mocked a sinner damned; no memento-mori admonished men to live while yet they might.  Here Death hid his skull; and hid it in the sea, the common sepulcher of Odo.  Not dust to dust, but dust to brine; not hearses but canoes.  For all who died upon that isle were carried out beyond the outer reef, and there were buried with their sires’ sires.  Hence came the thought, that of gusty nights, when round the isles, and high toward heaven, flew the white reef’s rack and foam, that then and there, kept chattering watch and ward, the myriads that were ocean-tombed.

But why these watery obsequies?

Odo was but a little isle, and must the living make way for the dead, and Life’s small colony be dislodged by Death’s grim hosts; as the gaunt tribes of Tamerlane o’erspread the tented pastures of the Khan?

And now, what follows, said these Islanders:  “Why sow corruption in the soil which yields us life?  We would not pluck our grapes from over graves.  This earth’s an urn for flowers, not for ashes.”

They said that Oro, the supreme, had made a cemetery of the sea.

And what more glorious grave?  Was Mausolus more sublimely urned?  Or do the minster-lamps that burn before the tomb of Charlemagne, show more of pomp, than all the stars, that blaze above the shipwrecked mariner?

But no more of the dead; men shrug their shoulders, and love not their company; though full soon we shall all have them for fellows.

CHAPTER LXIV Yillah A Phantom

For a time we were happy in Odo:  Yillah and I in our islet.  Nor did the pearl on her bosom glow more rosily than the roses in her cheeks; though at intervals they waned and departed; and deadly pale was her glance, when she murmured of the whirlpool and mosses.  As pale my soul, bethinking me of Aleema the priest.

But day by day, did her spell weave round me its magic, and all the hidden things of her being grew more lovely and strange.  Did I commune with a spirit?  Often I thought that Paradise had overtaken me on earth, and that Yillah was verily an angel, and hence the mysteries that hallowed her.

But how fleeting our joys.  Storms follow bright dawnings.—­Long memories of short-lived scenes, sad thoughts of joyous hours—­how common are ye to all mankind.  When happy, do we pause and say—­“Lo, thy felicity, my soul?” No:  happiness seldom seems happiness, except when looked back upon from woes.  A flowery landscape, you must come out of, to behold.

Sped the hours, the days, the one brief moment of our joys.  Fairy bower in the fair lagoon, scene of sylvan ease and heart’s repose,—­ Oh, Yillah, Yillah!  All the woods repeat the sound, the wild, wild woods of my wild soul.  Yillah!  Yillah! cry the small strange voices in me, and evermore, and far and deep, they echo on.