voices of airs that
murmured in the thickets, the soft gliding of streams, the crooning of
serene birds, the peace of noonday, the welling of clear springs, the
beauty of little waves, the bright thoughts of stars. Sometimes in
certain modes, they could be sad, but it was the sadness of lonely
homeless things, old dreaming spirits of wind and wave, not the
sadness of such things as had known love and lost what they had loved,
but the melancholy of such forlorn beings as by their nature were shut
out from the love that dwells about the firelit hearth and the old
roofs of homesteads. It was the sadness of the wind that wails in
desolate places, knowing that it is lonely, but not knowing what it
desires; or the soft sighing of trees that murmur all together in a
forest, dreaming each its own dream, but with no thought of
comradeship or desire.

The metal instruments, out of which the cunning breath could draw
bright music, seemed to him soulless too in a sort, but shrill and
enlivening. These clarions and trumpets spoke to him of brisk morning
winds, or the cold sharp plunge of green waves that leap in triumph
upon rocks. To such sounds he fancied warriors marching out at
morning, with the joy of fight in their hearts, meaning to deal great
blows, to slay and be slain, and hardly thinking of what would come
after, so sharp and swift an eagerness of spirit held them; but these
instruments he loved less.

Best of all he loved the resounding strings that could be twanged by
the quill, or swept into a heavenly melody by the finger-tips, or
throb beneath the strongly drawn bow. In all of these lay the secrets
of the heart; in these Paul heard speak the bright dreams of the
child, the vague hopes of growing boy or girl, the passionate desires
of love, the silent loyalty of equal friendship, the dreariness of the
dejected spirit, whose hopes have set like the sun smouldering to his
fall, the rebellious grief of the heart that loses what it loves, the
darkening fears that begin to roll about the ageing mind, like clouds
that weep on mountain tops, and the despair of sinners, finding the
evil too strong.

Best of all it was when all these instruments could conspire together
to weave a sudden dream of beauty that seemed to guard a secret. What
was the secret? It seemed so near to Paul sometimes, as if he were
like a man very near the edge of some mountain from which he may peep
into an unknown valley. Sometimes it was far away.