Fulke Greville laughed, saying,—

'A very apt simile; at least, for any attempt I was bold enow to make; but read on, Philip. I see a whole page of Edmund's somewhat cramped writing.'

'It is but a fragment,' Philip said, 'but Edmund makes a note below that he had in his mind a fair morning, when we walked together at Penshurst, and that the sounds and sights he here describes in verse are wafted to him from that time.'

'Why do you sigh as you say that, Philip? Come, man, let us have no melancholy remembrances, when all ought to be bright and gay.'

'The past time has ever somewhat of sadness as we live in it again. Have you never heard, Fulke, of the hope deferred that maketh a sick heart, nor of the hunger of the soul for the tree of life, which is to be ever denied?'

'I am in no mood for such melancholy,' was the answer. 'Let us hear what Spenser saith of that time of which you speak. I'll warrant we shall find it hard to pick out faults in what he writes therein.

Then Philip read,—

'Eftsoones they heard a most melodious sound
Of all that mote delight a daintie eare,
Such as att once might not on living ground,
Save in this paradise, be heard elsewhere:
Right hard it was for wight which did it heare,
To read what manner musicke that mote bee,
For all that pleasing is to living eare
Was there consorted in one harmonee—
Birdes, voices, instruments, windes, waters, all agree.
'The joyous birdes, shrouded in cheerefull shade,
Their notes unto the voyce attempred sweet,
Th' angelicall soft trembling voyces made
To th' instruments divine respondence meet;
The silver-sounding instruments did meet
With the base murmure of the waters' fall,
The waters' fall with difference discreet,
Now soft, now loud, unto the wind did call,
The gentle warbling wind low answered to all.'

We may well think that these stanzas, which form a part of the 12th canto of the Second Book of the Faerie Queene have seldom been read to a more appreciative audience, nor by a more musical voice. After a moment's silence, Edward Dyer said,—

'I find nought to complain of in all these lines. They flow like the stream rippling adown from the mountain side—a stream as pure as the fountain whence it springs.'