t shame or
desire! I walked down to the castle. All were in consternation at my
absence. My sisters were weeping for my loss. They sprang up and clung
to me, with incoherent cries, as I entered. My old friends came flocking
round me. A gray light shone on the roof of the hall. It was the
light of the dawn shining through the square window of my tower.
More earnestly than ever, I longed for freedom after this dream; more
drearily than ever, crept on the next wretched day. I measured by the
sunbeams, caught through the little window in the trap of my tower, how
it went by, waiting only for the dreams of the night.

About noon, I started as if something foreign to all my senses and all
my experience, had suddenly invaded me; yet it was only the voice of
a woman singing. My whole frame quivered with joy, surprise, and the
sensation of the unforeseen. Like a living soul, like an incarnation of
Nature, the song entered my prison-house. Each tone folded its wings,
and laid itself, like a caressing bird, upon my heart. It bathed me like
a sea; inwrapt me like an odorous vapour; entered my soul like a long
draught of clear spring-water; shone upon me like essential sunlight;
soothed me like a mother's voice and hand. Yet, as the clearest
forest-well tastes sometimes of the bitterness of decayed leaves, so to
my weary, prisoned heart, its cheerfulness had a sting of cold, and its
tenderness unmanned me with the faintness of long-departed joys. I wept
half-bitterly, half-luxuriously; but not long. I dashed away the tears,
ashamed of a weakness which I thought I had abandoned. Ere I knew, I had
walked to the door, and seated myself with my ears against it, in order
to catch every syllable of the revelation from the unseen outer world.
And now I heard each word distinctly. The singer seemed to be standing
or sitting near the tower, for the sounds indicated no change of place.
The song was something like this:

The sun, like a golden knot on high,
Gathers the glories of the sky,
And binds them into a shining tent,
Roofing the world with the firmament.
And through the pavilion the rich winds blow,
And through the pavilion the waters go.
And the birds for joy, and the trees for prayer,
Bowing their heads in the sunny air,
And for thoughts, the gently talking springs,
That come from the centre with secret things--
All make a music, gen