Angels and Women (1924)

sod, the empty stubble rustled in the wind,
the untouched orange and fig, decaying on
the ground, went back into the parent stem
to bloom again and again in vernal beauty.
Sound there was none, but sighing of the
winds as they swept mournfully across the
lonely Eden; no motion save that of light
and shadow flitting over tenantless plains.
Silence and solitude forever brooded there.
A belt of funeral yews, under-grown with a
thicket of brush-thorns, hedged in this land
of supernal but desolate beauty. Directly
in front of the Warder’s Rock was a narrow
opening bounded by two ancient yews of
magnificent proportions; between these
trees had sprung up a gigantic vine, whose
wide-spread branches, twined and interwoven,
made a vast impenetrable screen,
closing the gate-way of the Garden of the
Lord. The tangles of this deadly vine had
formed themselves into spectral characters,
which, facing outward, perennially
the --
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