McTaggart lay on the golden sands of Viareggio, warming himself, lazily, like a lizard, in the sun.
Before him stretched the broad, unbroken curve of the bay, a dazzling sheet of sapphire blue, save where the white "Molo," like a slender finger pointed from the basin of the docks, where the shipping yards lay, and masts and spars went up in a cluster of spear points, dark against the sky.
His eyes followed the line of the pier to the lighthouse at the end and wandered off through the haze to the distant shore, where a group of cypresses clustered, sombre and grim, like sentinels stationed, guarding the land. The dark, tapering trees in the brilliance of the sunshine held a hint of sadness like the presence of a grave; appropriate to the scene where that spirit of fire and air, the poet S
