ws the life as it goes
awake or asleep into the river that sings as it flows and the life it
blows into the sheep awake or asleep with the woolliest wool and the
trailingest tails and it never fails gentle and cool to wave the wool
and to toss the grass as the lambs and the sheep over it pass and tug
and bite with their teeth so white and then with the sweep of their
trailing tails smooth it again and it grows amain and amain it grows and
the wind as it blows tosses the swallows over the hollows and down on
the shallows till every feather doth shake and quiver and all their
feathers go all together blowing the life and the joy so rife into the
swallows that skim the shallows and have the yellowest children for the
wind that blows is the life of the river flowing for ever that washes
the grasses still as it passes and feeds the daisies the little white
praises and buttercups bonny so golden and sunny with butter and honey
that whiten the sheep awake or asleep that nibble and bite and grow
whiter than white and merry and quiet on the sweet diet fed by the river
and tossed for ever by the wind that tosses the swallow that crosses
over the shallows dipping his wings to gather the water and bake the
cake that the wind shall make as hard as a bone as dry as a stone it's
all in the wind that blows from behind and all in the river that flows
for ever and all in the grasses and the white daisies and the merry
sheep awake or asleep and the happy swallows skimming the shallows and
it's all in the wind that blows from behind.

Here Diamond became aware that his mother had stopped reading.

"Why don't you go on, mother dear?" he asked.

"It's such nonsense!" said his mother. "I believe it would go on for
ever."

"That's just what it did," said Diamond.

"What did?" she asked.

"Why, the river. That's almost the very tune it used to sing."

His mother was frightened, for she thought the fever was coming on
again. So she did not contradict him.

"Who made that poem?" asked Diamond.

"I don't know," she answered. "Some silly woman for her children, I
suppose--and then thought it good enough to print."

"She must have been at the back of the north wind some time or other,
anyhow," said Diamond. "She couldn't have got a hold of it anywhere
else. That's just how it went." And he began to chant bits of it here
and there; but his mother said nothing for fear of making him, worse;
and she was very glad indeed when she saw her b