202 FROM THE NIGER TO THE NILE 



More lovely in voice than the nightingale, more shy than she, 

 his song seems the soaring spirit of the haunts in which 

 he dwells ; first, whispering notes like little puffs of wind 

 through green leaves ; then a soft soliloquy of liquid sounds 

 like the stream that runs below his singing-bough, so sad 

 that it is surely here beneath these waters that Narcissus 

 lies. Quicker and louder mounts the song, to break in long 

 notes that swoop and thrill with a passion that is all the 

 sweet bird's own. Hours have I watched to catch sight of 

 the maker of such pure music — but never to see more than a 

 flash of red in the interval of silence before the fountain of 

 song started to shower again from some fresh-enchanted 

 tree — until I almost came to believe that it was a spirit 

 bodiless, and to think it most right that a voice which 

 could interpret the heart-beat of Earth, should be too great 

 to dwell in a tenement more confined than the air. 



