Pagina 166 di 788

Amid the birds' heads rose little human heads, uncovered, with

short hair, white as flax, their necks bare to the shoulders; in

their midst was a girl, a head higher than they, with longer

hair. Just behind the children sat a peacock, and spread out wide

the circle of its tail into a many-coloured rainbow, against the

deep blue of which the little white heads were relieved as on the

background of a picture; they gathered radiance, being surrounded

by the gleaming eyes of the tail as by a wreath of stars, and

they shone amid the grain as in the transparent ether, between

the golden stalks of the maize, the English grass with its

silvery stripes, the coral mercury, and the green mallow, the

forms and colours of which were mingled together like a lattice

plaited of silver and gold, and waving in the air like a light

veil.