“My lord Media,” impetuously resumed Yoomy, “I am sensible of a thousand sweet, merry fancies, limpid with innocence; yet my enemies account them all lewd conceits.”

“There be those in Mardi,” said Babbalanja, “who would never ascribe evil to others, did they not find it in their own hearts; believing none can be different from themselves.”

“My lord, my lord!” cried Yoomy.  “The air that breathes my music from me is a mountain air!  Purer than others am I; for though not a woman, I feel in me a woman’s soul.”

“Ah, have done, silly Yoomy,” said Media.  “Thou art becoming flighty, even as Babbalanja, when Azzageddi is uppermost.”

“Thus ever:  ever thus!” sighed Yoomy.  “They comprehend us not.”

“Nor me,” said Babbalanja.  “Yoomy:  poets both, we differ but in seeming; thy airiest conceits are as the shadows of my deepest ponderings; though Yoomy soars, and Babbalanja dives, both meet at last.  Not a song you sing, but I have thought its thought; and where dull Mardi sees but your rose, I unfold its petals, and disclose a pearl.  Poets are we, Yoomy, in that we dwell without us; we live in grottoes, palms, and brooks; we ride the sea, we ride the sky; poets are omnipresent.”

CHAPTER XXXIV Of The Isle Of Diranda

In good time the shores of Diranda were in sight.  And, introductory to landing, Braid-Beard proceeded to give us some little account of the island, and its rulers.

As previously hinted, those very magnificent and illustrious lord seigniors, the lord seigniors Hello and Piko, who between them divided Diranda, delighted in all manner of public games, especially warlike ones; which last were celebrated so frequently, and were so fatal in their results, that, not-withstanding the multiplicity of nuptials taking place in the isle, its population remained in equilibrio.  But, strange to relate, this was the very object which the lord seigniors had in view; the very object they sought to compass, by instituting their games.  Though, for the most part, they wisely kept the secret locked up.

But to tell how the lord seigniors Hello and Piko came to join hands in this matter.

Diranda had been amicably divided between them ever since the day they were crowned; one reigning king in the East, the other in the West.  But King Piko had been long harassed with the thought, that the unobstructed and indefinite increase of his browsing subjects might eventually denude of herbage his portion of the island.  Posterity, thought he, is marshaling her generations in squadrons, brigades, and battalions, and ere long will be down upon my devoted empire.  Lo! her locust cavalry darken the skies; her light-troop pismires cover the earth.  Alas! my son and successor, thou wilt inhale choke-damp for air, and have not a private corner to say thy prayers.

By a sort of arithmetical progression, the probability, nay, the certainty of these results, if not in some way averted, was proved to King Piko; and he was furthermore admonished, that war—­war to the haft with King Hello—­was the only cure for so menacing an evil.