crete-de-coq

Updated: May 10, 2025

And the sight of the pretty lizards, puffing their crimson pouches in the sun, or undulating athwart epitaphs, and shifting their color when approached, from emerald to ashen-gray; the caravans of the ants, journeying to and from tiny chinks in the masonry; the bees gathering honey from the crimson blossoms of the crete-de-coq, whose radicles sought sustenance, perhaps from human dust, in the decay of generations: all that rich life of graves summoned up fancies of Resurrection, Nature's resurrection-work wondrous transformations of flesh, marvellous bans migration of souls! ... From some forgotten crevice of that tomb roof, which alone intervened between her and the vast light, a sturdy weed was growing.

Lafcadio Hearn - Chita: a Memory of Last Island