stood up before the King.

And the King said:

"Zornadhu, what of the journey of the King and of the princes and the
people that shall meet me?"

Zornadhu answered:

"I know nought of Kings, but in the night time the poppy made his
journey a little before dawn. Thereafter the wildfowl came as is their
wont over Sidono's summit, and the sun rising behind them gleamed upon
Sidono, and all the flowers of the lake awoke. And the bee passing up
and down the garden went droning to other poppies, and the flowers of
the lake, they that had known the poppy, knew him no more. And the
sun's rays slanting from Sidono's crest lit still a garden valley where
one poppy waved his petals to the dawn no more. And I, O King, that
down a path of gleaming ocean shells walk in the morning, found not,
nor have since found, that poppy again, that hath gone on the journey
whence there is not returning, out of my garden valley. And I, O King,
made a dirge to cry beyond that valley and the poppies bowed their
heads; but there is no cry nor no lament that may adjure the life to
return again to a flower that grew in a garden once and hereafter is
not.

"Unto what place the lives of poppies have gone no man shall truly say.
Sure it is that to that place are only outward tracks. Only it may be
that when a man dreams at evening in a garden where heavily the scent
of poppies hangs in the air, when the winds have sunk, and far away the
sound of a lute is heard on lonely hills, as he dreams of silken-scarlet