A Dweller on two Planets, Interlude 4
A DWELLER ON TWO PLANETS
OR
THE DIVIDING OF THE
WAY
BY PHYLOS THE THIBETAN
SEVEN SHASTA SCENES
By Frederick S. Oliver, Amanuensis
INTERLUDE IV
Night. Otherwise the same scene. Our miner sits in his tent door, meditating
on the novel beauty of the scene before, below him. A north breeze has rolled the
smoky sea silently away and left no sign. Beneath the tent outspreads a vast abyss,
dark, silent, "the night's Plutonian shore." Our miner's fancy fills it with golden
phantoms. Only the stars, "night's tall tapers," lighten the gloom. But far away
east, over ranges of lesser mountains, dim shapes couched in the darkness, far away,
miles real as well as seeming, familiar shadowy shape of vast, uncertain size appears
to shut from sight vision of some awful conflagration. Look! It grows, it brightens,
till on the charmed eyes bursts a sudden, intense spark, then a full flame in Ieka's
side--'tis the moon at its roundest! And now Ieka's snows glow in its ray like molten
silver, the dark abyss before, beneath the tent lightens, the phantoms flee, while
over all, sublime, glorious, supreme, rises Shasta's argent image.
