e uttering their appointed notes in harmony and
without dismay.

Everywhere the sound rose up through the darkness of great distance, yet
at the same time ran most penetratingly sweet, close beside them in their
very ears. So magically intimate indeed was it, yet so potentially huge
for all its soft beginning, that Spinrobin declares that what he heard
was probably not the actual voices, but only some high liberated
harmonics of them.

The sounds, moreover, were not distinguishable as consonants and vowels
in the ordinary sense, and to this day remain for him beyond all reach
of possible reproduction. He did not hear them as "word" or "syllable,"
but as some incalculably splendid Message that was too mighty to be
taken in, yet at the same time was sweeter than all imagined music,
simple as a little melody "sweetly sung in tune," artless as wind
through rustling branches.

And, moreover, as this small, sweet voice ran singing everywhere about
them in the darkness of hills and woods, Spinrobin realized, with a
whole revolution of wonder sweeping through him, that the sound, for all
its gentleness, was at work vehemently upon the surface of the
landscape, altering and shifting the pattern of the solid earth, just as
the sand had wreathed into outlines at the sound of his own voice weeks
ago, and as the form of the clergyman had changed at the vibrations of
the test night.

The first letters of the opening syllable of this divine and magical
name were passing over the world ... shifting the myriad molecules that
composed it by the stress and stir of its vast harmonics ... changing
the pattern.

But this time the change was not dreadful; the new outline, even before
he actually perceived it, was beautiful above all known forms of beauty.
The outer semblance of the old earth appeared to melt away and reveal
that heart of clean and dazzling wonder which burns ever at its inmost
core--the naked spirit divined by poets and mystics since the beginning
of time. It was a new heaven and a new earth that pulsed below them in
response to the majesty of this small sweet voice. All nature knew, from
the birds that started out of sleep into passionate singing, to the fish
that stirred in the depths of the sea, and the wild deer that sprang
alert in their wintry coverts, scenting an eternal spring. For the earth
rolled up as a scroll, shaking the outworn skin of centuries from her
face, and suffering all her rocky structure to drop