The of a single rose that in a secret place had not 

 Gardens y e t heard the common doom, and with his 

 Sea breath gave it a body, and a pulse to its heart, 



and fashioned for it a feather-covering made 

 of down of the bog-cotton and the soft under- 

 sides of alder-leaf and olive. Then, from a 

 single blade of grass that still whispered in a 

 twilight hollow, he made a like marvel, to be 

 a mate to the first, and sent out both into the 

 green world, to carry song to the woods and 

 the valleys, the hills and the wildernesses, the 

 furthest shores, the furthest isles. Thus was 

 the nightingale created, the first bird, the 

 herald of all the small clans of the bushes that 

 have kept wild-song in the world, and are our 

 delight. 



But in the hearts of certain of the green 

 tribes a sullen anger endured. So the mys- 

 terious Hand which had taken song and 

 cadence away punished these sullen ones. 

 From some, fragrance also was taken. There 

 were orchid -queens of forest -loveliness from 

 whom all fragrance suddenly passed like 

 smoke : there were white delicate phantoms 

 among the grasses, from whom sweet odour 

 was lifted as summer dew : there were nomads 

 of the hillways and gypsies of the plain to 

 whom were given the rankness of the waste, 

 the smell of things evil, of corruption, of the 



214 



