The Book of Wonder

Her father had been half centaur and half god; her mother was the child of a desert lion and that sphinx that watches the pyramids;-she was more mystical than Woman. Her beauty was as a dream, was as a song; the one dream of a lifetime dreamed on enchanted dews, the one song sung to some city by a deathless bird blown far from his native coasts by storm in Paradise. Dawn after dawn on mountains of romance or twilight after twilight could never equal her beauty; all the glow-worms had not the secret among them nor all the stars of night; poets had never sung it nor evening guessed its meaning; the morning envied it, it was hidden from lovers. She was unwed, unwooed