THE SINGING PINES 57 



odies on a xylophone. I listened long to this. 

 It was not exactly a comfortable position. To 

 hear I must press, and the tree bark was hard 

 and the rain ran down the trunk and into my ear. 

 Yet the music was exquisite, a little runic rhyme, 

 repeated over and over again with quaint varia- 

 tions but with neither beginning nor end. It was 

 wonderfully wild and fairylike, . Who would 

 stop for water in his ear or a pain in the lobe 

 of it? Midnight, the middle of the gale, the mid- 

 dle of the woods; perhaps here was that very 

 opening into the realm of the unseen woodland 

 folk that we all in our inmost hearts hope for 

 and expect some day to find. 



So did he feel who pulled the boughs aside, 

 That we might look into the forest wide. 



Telling us how fair trembling Syrinx fled 

 Arcadian Pan, with such a fearful dread. 

 Poor nymph — poor Pan — how he did weep to find 

 Naught but a lovely sighing of the wind 

 Along the reedy stream ; a half heard strain. 

 Full of sweet desolation, balmy pain. 



It may have been the dryad, playing the xylo- 

 phone for a dance unseen by my gross mortal 

 eyes, but if my water-logged ear did not deceive 



