Lafcadio Hearn

Two years in the French West Indies Lafcadio Hearn

When you find yourself for the first time, upon some unshadowed day, in the delightful West Indian city of St. Pierre, -supposing that you own the sense of poetry, the recollections of a student, -there is apt to steal upon your fancy an impression of having seen it all before, ever so long ago, -you cannot tell where. The sensation of some happy dream you cannot wholly recall might be compared to this feeling. In the simplicity and solidity of the quaint architecture, -in the eccentricity of bright narrow streets, all aglow with warm coloring, -in the tints of roof and wall, antiquated by streakings and patchings of mould greens and grays, -in the startling absence of window-sashes, glass, gas lamps, and chimneys, -in the blossom-tenderness of the blue heaven, the splendor of tropic light, and the warmth of the tropic wind, -you find less the impression of a scene of to-day than the sensation of something that was and is not. Slowly this feeling strengthens with your pleasure in the colorific radiance of costume, -the semi-nudity of passing figures, -the puissant shapeliness of torsos ruddily swart like statue metal, -the rounded outline of limbs yellow as tropic fruit, -the grace of attitudes, -the unconscious harmony of groupings, -the gathering and folding and falling of light robes that oscillate with swaying of free hips, -the sculptural symmetry of unshod feet. You look up and down the lemon-tinted streets, -down to the dazzling azure brightness of meeting sky and sea; up to the perpetual verdure of mountain woods-wondering at the mellowness of tones, the sharpness of lines in the light, the diaphaneity of colored shadows; always asking memory: "When?... where did I see all this.