CHAPTER LXXXVII.
Nora-Bamma Still onward gliding, the lagoon a calm.
Hours pass; and full before us, round and green, a Moslem turban by us floats--Nora-Bamma, Isle of Nods.
Noon-tide rolls its flood.

Vibrates the air, and trembles.

And by illusion optical, thin-draped in azure haze, drift here and there the brilliant lands: swans, peacock-plumaged, sailing through the sky.
Down to earth hath heaven come; hard telling sun-clouds from the isles.
And high in air nods Nora-Bamma.

Nid-nods its tufted summit like three ostrich plumes; its beetling crags, bent poppies, shadows, willowy shores, all nod; its streams are murmuring down the hills; its wavelets hush the shore.
Who dwells in Nora-Bamma?
Dreamers, hypochondriacs, somnambulists; who, from the cark and care of outer Mardi fleeing, in the poppy's jaded odors, seek oblivion for the past, and ecstasies to come.
Open-eyed, they sleep and dream; on their roof-trees, grapes unheeded drop.

In Nora-Bamma, whispers are as shouts; and at a zephyr's breath, from the woodlands shake the leaves, as of humming-birds, a flight.
All this spake Braid-Beard, of the isle.