Flocks of
various coloured stars, flaming Jupiter high up in the sky, red Mars
low down in the horizon, the Great Bear beautifully distinct, the
polar star at an angle--the star whereby Owen used to steer. All the
world seemed to be going to the same sweet strain, the soul,
seemingly freed, rose to the lips, and, in her pride, sought words
wherewith to tell the passionate melancholy of the night and of life.
But the soul could not tell it; only the nightingale, who, without
knowing it, was singing what the soul may only feel.
"The bird is telling me what your voice used to tell me long ago."
The lovers wandered through the garden, suffused with delicate
scents, and Owen told her of the legend of the nightingale and the
swallow, a legend coming down from some barbaric age, from a king
called Pandion, who, despite his wife's beauty, fell in love with her
sister, and ravished her in some town in Thessaly, the name of which
Owen could not remember. Fearing, however, that his lust would reach
his wife's ears, Pandion cut out the girl's tongue. This barbarous
act, committed before Greece was, had been redeemed by the Grecian
spirit, which had added that the girl; though without tongue to tell
the cruel deed, had, nevertheless, hands wherewith to weave it.
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