IN QUEST OF RARE SONGSTERS 151 



immortal green of earth ever before him, so varied in 

 its shades, so flowery, splashed everywhere with tender, 

 brilliant gold of buttercups, so batiicd in sunlight and 

 shaded with great trees — green woods with their roots 

 in the divine blue of the wild hyacinth. Who would not 

 wish to go on for days, months, years even, to the stars 

 if we could travel to them in that way! 



I don't know much about the stars, nor am I anxious 

 to visit them; it was only the thought of the long green 

 way that fascinated me. By-and-by it came into my 

 mind that some one had said, just to enable us to grasp 

 the idea of their distance from the earth, that it would 

 take a non-stopping express train forty million years 

 to get to a star — which star, if any particular one was 

 meant, I don't remember. The thought of it began to 

 oppress me, for by-and-by, after a few centuries perhaps, 

 I should begin to wish for a break, a stop for half an 

 hour, let us say, at some small wayside station to enable 

 me to lie down for a few minutes on my back in the 

 grass to gaze up into the blue sky with its floating 

 white clouds, and, above all, to listen to the skylark 

 and to every other sweet singing bird. I began to think 

 that seeing is not everything, since we have other senses ; 

 I wanted to hear and smell and taste and feel ; to wrap 

 myself about with these sensations, to pierce and dwell 

 in them as some tiny insect penetrates to the hollow 

 chamber of a flower to feed at ease on its secret sweet- 

 ness. I recalled the complaint of the spiritual-minded 

 author of the Cynthiades to his Cvnthia, that he was 

 not content even in their moments of supremest bliss — 



