isfying, something apart from the
world we had left, was not anything we saw with eye. All that was
visible was beautiful, but it was a loveliness not unfamiliar; it was
the invisible continually breaking in upon our consciousness that laid
us under a spell. We were conscious of something lovelier than we saw;
a world not to be discerned by sight, but real and unspeakably
beautiful to the soul. Even to Caliban the isle was "full of noises;"
"sounds and sweet airs that give delight" did not escape his brutish
sense. Sometimes "a thousand twangling instruments" hummed about his
ears; sometimes voices whose soft music was akin to sleep floated about
him; and sometimes the clouds "would open and show riches ready to drop
upon" him. There was a sweet enchantment in the air to which the
dullest could not be indifferent. It hovered over us like some finer
beauty, just beyond the vision of sense, and yet as real, almost as
tangible, as the things we touched and saw.

Alone as we were upon the little island, we felt the diviner world of
which that tiny bit of earth was part; we knew the higher beauty of
which all that visible loveliness was but a sign and symbol. The song
of the sea, breathed from we knew not what depths of space, was not
more real than this melody, haunting the island and dropping from the
air like blossoms from a ripening tree. Turn where we would, this
music went with us; it mingled with the murmur of the trees; it blended
with the limpid note of the rivulet; it melted with the breeze that
swept across the grassy places. All day, and for many another day, we
were conscious of a larger world of harmony and beauty folding in our
little world of tree and soil; we lived in it as freely and made it
ours as fully as the bit of earth beneath our feet. Through all our
talk this thread of melody was run, and our very thoughts were set to
this unfailing music. In those days the Poet wrote no verses; what
need of verse when poetry itself, that deep and breathing beauty of the
soul of things, filled every hour and overflowed all the channels of
thought and sense!

But if we were dumb in the hearing of a music beyond our mastery, we
were not blind to the parable conveyed in every sound and sight; in
those delicious days and nights a great truth cleared itself forever in
our minds. We know henceforth how all dream-worlds, all beautiful
hopes and visions and ideals, are fashioned. They are not of human
making