real before thee, seen only hitherto as a mirage in the Waste.

"So far the swarming hours may not come, and far away among the tents
shall stand the dark figure with the nimble sword. But in the
scintillant streets, under the song-built abodes of the last of cities,
thy journey, O King, shall end."


_VII_

In the valley beyond Sidono there lies a garden of poppies, and where
the poppies' heads are all a-swing with summer breezes that go up the
valley there lies a path well strewn with ocean shells. Over Sidono's
summit the birds come streaming to the lake that lies in the valley of
the garden, and behind them rises the sun sending Sidono's shadow as
far as the edge of the lake. And down the path of many ocean shells
when they begin to gleam in the sun, every morning walks an aged man
clad in a silken robe with strange devices woven. A little temple where
the old man lives stands at the edge of the path. None worship there,
for Zornadhu, the old prophet, hath forsaken men to walk among his
poppies.

For Zornadhu hath failed to understand the purport of Kings and cities
and the moving up and down of many people to the tune of the clinking
of gold. Therefore hath Zornadhu gone far away from the sound of cities
and from those that are ensnared thereby, and beyond Sidono's mountain
hath come to rest where there are neither kings nor armies nor
bartering for gold, but only the heads of the poppies that sway in the
wind together and the birds that fly from Sidono to the lake, and then
the sunrise over Sidono's summit; and afterwards the flight of birds