in years. There lies the Centre Garden of the gods, facing full
seawards. All around lie songs that on earth were never sung, fair
thoughts not heard among the worlds, dream pictures never seen that
drifted over Time without a home till at last the aeons swept them on
to the shore of space. And in the Centre Garden of the gods bloom many
fancies. Therein once some souls were playing where the gods walked up
and down and to and fro. And a dream came in more beauteous than the
rest on the crest of a wave of Time, and one soul going downward to the
shore clutched at the dream and caught it. Then over the dreams and
stories and old songs that lay on the shore of space the hours came
sweeping back, and the centuries caught that soul and swirled him with
his dream far out to the Sea of Time, and the aeons swept him
earthwards and cast him into a palace with all the might of the sea and
left him there with his dream. The child grew to a King and still
clutched at his dream till the people wondered and laughed. Then, O
King, Thou didst cast thy dream back into the Sea, and Time drowned it
and men laughed no more, but thou didst forget that a certain sea beat
on a distant shore and that there was a garden and therein souls. But
at the end of the journey that thou shalt take, when thou comest to the
shore of space again thou shalt go up the beach, and coming to a garden
gate that stands in a garden wall shalt remember these things again,
for it stands where the hours assail not above the beating of Time, far
up the shore, and nothing altereth there. So thou shalt go through the
garden gate and hear again the whispering of the souls when they talk
low where sing the voices of the gods. There with kindred souls thou
shalt speak as thou didst of yore and tell them what befell thee beyond
the tides of time and how they took thee and made of thee a King so
that thy soul found no rest. There in the Centre Garden thou shalt sit
at ease and watch the gods all rainbow-clad go up and down and to and
fro on the paths of dreams and songs, and shalt not venture down to the