A flash of light, a crash of thunder,

And magic whirlwinds start awake,

I feel the earth begin to quake,

I hear it hum and rumble under

My feet, and there in front of me,

The picture of senility,

A crone stands. She is bent and shrunken,

Her hair is white, her eye is sunken

And glazed with age, her head is shaking...

And yet, and yet - had I mistaken

Her for another?-Nay, O knight;

Nahina 'twas!... In doubt, in fright

The horrid vision now I measured

With unbelieving gaze, my sight

Mistrusting.... 'Thou! Art thou my treasured

Nahina? Speak!' from me the cry

Burst forth. 'Where is thy beauty? Wby

Have the gods changed thee so? Have I

Long, then, from life and love been parted?'

'For forty years!' I heard her say.

'Indeed, I'm seventy to-day!...

But never mind! So are lives charted

And so they pass. Thy spring has flown

And mine has too. We are, I own,

Old, both, but be thou not disheartened

By fickle youth's swift passage. True,

I'm grey, a trifle crooked too,

Less lively and perhaps less charming

Than once I was....' This in disarming

Tones she declared, her voice a squeak.

'Come, do not look, I beg, so tragic....

I am-in confidence I speak-

Like thee become well versed in magic.'