"My anemones are dead for miles," she said, "all my woods are fallen and still the cities grow. My child Man is unhappy and my other children are dying, and still the cities grow and you have forgotten me!" And then he turned angrily on her, almost stopping in that stride of his that began when the stars were made. "When have I ever forgotten you?" he said, "or when forsaken you ever? Did I not throw down Babylon for you? And is not Nineveh gone? Where is Persepolis that troubled you? Where Tarshish and Tyre? And you have said I forget you." And at this she seemed to take a little comfort. I heard her speak once more, looking wistfully at her companion. "When will the fields come back and the grass for my children?" "Soon, soon," he said: then they were silent. And he strode away, she limping along behind him, and all the clocks in the towers chimed as he passed. THE SONG OF THE BLACKBIRD As the poet passed the thorn-tree the blackbird sang. "How ever do you do it?" the poet said, for he knew bird language. "It was like this," said the blackbird. "It really was the most extraordinary thing. I made that song last Spring, it came to me all of a sudden. There was the most beautiful she-blackbird that the world has ever seen. Her eyes were blacker than lakes are at night, her feathers were blacker than the night itself, and nothing was as yellow as her beak; she could fly much faster than the lightning. She was not an ordinary she-blackbird, there has never been any other like her at all. I did not dare go near her because she was so wonderful. One day last Spring when it got warm again--it had been cold, we ate berries, things were quite different then, but Spring came and it got warm--one day I was thinking how wonderful she was and it seemed so extraordinary to think that I should ever have seen her, the only really wonderful she-blackbird in the world, that I opened my beak to give a shout, and then this song came, and there had never been anything like it before, and luckily I remembered it, the very song that I sang just now. But what is so extraordinary, the most amazing occurence of that marvellous day, was that no sooner had I sung the song than that very bird, the most wonderful she-blackbird in the world, flew right up to me and sat quite close to me on the same tree. I never remember such wonderful times as those. "Yes, the song came in a moment, and as I was saying...." And an old wanderer walking with a stick came by and the blackbird flew away, and the poet told the old man the blackbird's wonderful story. "That song new?" said the wanderer. "Not a bit of it. God made it years ago. All the blackbirds used to sing it when I was young. It was new then." THE MESSENGERS One wandering nigh Parnassus chasing hares heard the high Muses. "Take us a message to the Golden Town." Thus sang the Muses. But the man said: "They do not call to me. Not to such as me speak the Muses." And the Muses called him by name.