strode on in front seemed to care for nothing, it might be hot or cold, silent or noisy, pavement or open fields, he merely had the air of striding on.
And she caught up and clutched him by the elbow. I heard her speak in her unhappy voice, you scarcely heard it for the noise of the traffic.
“You have forgotten me,” she complained to him. “You have forsaken me here.”
She pointed to Coventry with a wide wave of her arm and seemed to indicate other cities beyond. And he gruffly told her to keep pace with him and that he did not forsake her. And she went on with her pitiful lamentation.
“My anemones are dead for miles,” she said, “all my woods are fallen and still the cities grow. My child Man is unhappy and my other children are dying, and still the cities grow and you have forgotten me!”
And then he turned angrily on her, almost stopping in that stride of his that began when the stars were made.
“When have I ever forgotten you?” he said, “or when forsaken you ever? Did I not throw down Babylon for you? And is not Nineveh gone? Where is Persepolis that troubled you? Where Tarshish and Tyre? And you have said I forget you.”
And at this she seemed to take a little comfort. I heard her speak once more, looking wistfully at her companion. “When will the fields come back and the grass for my children?”
“Soon, soon,” he said: then they were silent. And he strode away, she limping along behind him, and all the clocks in the towers chimed as he passed.
The Song of the Blackbird
As the poet passed the thorn-tree the blackbird sang.
“How ever do you do it?” the poet said, for he knew bird language.
“It was like this,” said the blackbird. “It really was the most extraordinary thing. I made that song last Spring, it came to me all of a sudden. There was the most beautiful she-blackbird that the world has ever seen. Her eyes were blacker than lakes are at night, her feathers were blacker than the night itself, and nothing was as yellow as her beak; she could fly much faster than the lightning. She was not an ordinary she-blackbird, there has never been any other like her at all. I did not dare go near her because she was so wonderful. One day last Spring when it got warm again—it had been cold, we ate berries, things were quite different then, but Spring came and it got warm—one day I was thinking how wonderful she was and it seemed so extraordinary to think that I should ever have seen her, the only really wonderful she-blackbird in the world, that I opened my beak to give a shout, and then this song came, and there had never been anything like it before, and luckily I remembered it, the very song that I sang just now. But what is so extraordinary, the most amazing occurence of that marvellous day, was that no sooner had I sung the song than that very bird, the most wonderful she-blackbird in the world, flew right up to me and sat quite close to me on the same tree. I never remember such wonderful times as those.
“Yes, the song came in a moment, and as I was saying. …”
And an old wanderer walking with a stick came by and the blackbird flew away, and the poet told the old man the blackbird’s wonderful story.
“That song new?” said the wanderer. “Not a bit of it. God made it years ago. All the blackbirds used to sing it when I was young. It was new then.”
The Messengers
One wandering nigh Parnassus chasing hares heard the high Muses.
“Take us a message to the Golden Town.”
Thus sang the Muses.
But the man said: “They do not call to me. Not to such as me speak the Muses.”
And the Muses called him by name.
“Take us a message,” they said, “to the Golden Town.”
And the man was downcast for he would have chased hares.
And the Muses called again.
And when whether in valleys or on high crags of the hills he still heard the Muses he went at last to them and heard their message, though he would fain have left it to other men and chased the fleet hares still in happy valleys.
And they gave him a wreath of laurels carved out of emeralds as only the Muses can carve. “By this,” they said, “they shall know that you come from the Muses.”
And the man went from that place and dressed in scarlet silks as befitted one that came from the high Muses. And through the gateway of the Golden Town he ran and cried his message, and his cloak floated behind him. All silent sat the wise men and the aged, they of the Golden Town; cross-legged they sat before their houses reading from parchments a message of the Muses that they sent long before.
And the young man cried his message from the Muses.
And they rose up and said: “Thou art not from the Muses. Otherwise spake they.” And they stoned him and he died.
And afterwards they carved his message upon gold; and read it in their temples on holy days.
When will the Muses rest? When are they weary? They sent another messenger to the Golden Town. And they gave him a wand of ivory to carry in his hand with all the beautiful stories of the world wondrously carved thereon. And only the Muses could have carved it. “By this,” they said, “they shall know that you come from the Muses.”
And he came through the gateway of the Golden Town with the message he had for its people. And they rose up at once in the Golden street, they rose from reading the message that they had carved upon gold. “The last who came,” they said, “came with a wreath of laurels carved out of emeralds, as only the Muses
