dark and tangled in chaos, and he were exploring and picking
out a note here and a note there to fit his song. There was trouble
in his voice, and restlessness, and a low, eager striving, and a hope
which grew as the notes came oftener, and lingered and thrilled on
them. Then his fingers caught the strings together, and pulled the
first chord: it came out of the depths with a great sob--a soul set
free. Other souls behind it rose to his fingers, and he plucked them
forth, faster and faster--some wailing, some laughing fiercely, but
each with the echo of a great pit, the clang of doors, and the mutter
of an army pressing at its heels. And now the mourners leaned forward,
and forgot all except to listen, for he was singing the Creation. He
sang up the stars and set them in procession; he sang forth the sun
from his chamber; he lifted the heads of the mountains and hitched on
their mantles of green forest; he scattered the uplands with sheep,
and the upper air with clouds; he called the west wind, and it came
with a rustle of wings; he broke the rock into water and led it
dancing down the cliffs, and spread it in marshes, and sent it
spouting and hurrying in channels. Flowers trooped to the lip of it,
wild beasts slunk down to drink; armies of corn spread in rank along
it, and men followed with sickles, chanting the hymn of Linus; and
after them, with children at the breast, women stooped to glean or
strode upright bearing baskets of food. Over their heads days and
nights hurried in short flashes, and the seasons overtook them while
they rested, and drowned them in showers of bloom, and overtopped
their bodies with fresh corn: but the children caught up the sickles
and ran on. To some--shining figures in the host--he gave names; and
they shone because they moved in the separate light of divine eyes
watching them, rays breaking the thickets or hovering down from
heights where the gods sat at their ease.

But before this the men had brought their boats to shore, and hurried
to the Mount, drawn by his harping. They pressed around him in a ring;
and at first they were sad, since of what he sang they remembered the
like in Lyonnesse--plough and sickle and flail, nesting birds and
harvest, flakes of ore in the river-beds, dinner in the shade, and the
plain beyond winking in the noon-day heat. They had come too late for
the throes of his music, when the freed spirit trembled for a little
on the threshold, fronting the dawn, but