SILENCE AND MUSIC 165 



brightened by distance as to seem like no earthly 

 music. To say of a sound that it is bright is to use a 

 too common metaphor ; this sound shines above all 

 others, and the multitude of voices made one by 

 distance is an effulgence and a glory. I have listened 

 to it by the hour, never wearying nor ceasing to 

 wonder at that mysterious beautiful music which 

 could not be called crystalline nor silvery, but 

 was like the heavenly sunshine translated into sound ; 

 subtle, insistent, filling the world and the soul, yet 

 always at a vast distance, falling, falling like a lucid 

 rain. No other sound would have seemed worth 

 listening to there. The richest, most passionate strains 

 of the nightingale, if such a bird had by chance sung 

 near me in a bush, would have seemed no more than 

 the chirruping and chiding of a sparrow. And when I 

 have called to mind the best things our poets have said 

 of the lark, their words have sounded to me strangely 

 commonplace and even insipid : " Up with me, up 

 with me into the clouds " — it is but the common brown 

 bird of the corn-fields, the bird of earth with a nest 

 and a sitting mate, and a song full of harsh guttural 

 sounds mixed with clear notes, they have had in their 

 mind. But this is not strange, and I am the last 

 person to abuse the poets, since, apart from nature, 

 they provide me with the chief pleasure I have 

 in life. 



It is a common experience of the artist with the 

 brush to see effects in nature which he would never 



