to him a kind of soft magic, like the voice of a gentle spirit,
a spirit that dwelt in lonely unvisited places, and communed more with
things of earth than the hearts of men. In the flutes and bassoons
seemed to him to dwell the voices of airs that murmured in the thickets,
the soft gliding of streams, the crooning of serene birds, the peace of
noonday, the welling of clear springs, the beauty of little waves, the
bright thoughts of stars. Sometimes in certain modes, they could be sad,
but it was the sadness of lonely homeless things, old dreaming spirits
of wind and wave, not the sadness of such things as had known love and
lost what they had loved, but the melancholy of such forlorn beings as
by their nature were shut out from the love that dwells about the
firelit hearth and the old roofs of homesteads. It was the sadness of
the wind that wails in desolate places, knowing that it is lonely, but
not knowing what it desires; or the soft sighing of trees that murmur
all together in a forest, dreaming each its own dream, but with no
thought of comradeship or desire.

The metal instruments, out of which the cunning breath could draw bright
music, seemed to him soulless too in a sort, but shrill and enlivening.
These clarions and trumpets spoke to him of brisk morning winds, or the
cold sharp plunge of green waves that leap in triumph upon rocks. To
such sounds he fancied warriors marching out at morning, with the joy of
fight in their hearts, meaning to deal great blows, to slay and be
slain, and hardly thinking of what would come after, so sharp and swift
an eagerness of spirit held them; but these instruments he loved less.

Best of all he loved the resounding strings that could be twanged by the
quill, or swept into a heavenly melody by the finger-tips, or throb
beneath the strongly-drawn bow. In all of these lay the secrets of the
heart; in these Paul heard speak the bright dreams of the child, the
vague hopes of growing boy or girl, the passionate desires of love, the
silent loyalty of equal friendship, the dreariness of the dejected
spirit, whose hopes have set like the sun smouldering to his fall, the
rebellious grief of the heart that loses what it loves, the darkening
fears that begin to roll about the ageing mind, like clouds that weep on
mountain tops, and the despair of sinners, finding the evil too strong.

Best of all it was when all these instruments could conspire together to
weave a sudden dream of beau