Strung on your hair won't hurt your summer looks. I wanted to try something with the noise That the brook raises in the empty valley. We have seen visions--now consult the voices. Something I must have learned riding in trains When I was young. I used the roar To set the voices speaking out of it, Speaking or singing, and the band-music playing. Perhaps you have the art of what I mean. I've never listened in among the sounds That a brook makes in such a wild descent. It ought to give a purer oracle." "It's as you throw a picture on a screen: The meaning of it all is out of you; The voices give you what you wish to hear." "Strangely, it's anything they wish to give." "Then I don't know. It must be strange enough. I wonder if it's not your make-believe. What do you think you're like to hear to-day?" "From the sense of our having been together-- But why take time for what I'm like to hear? I'll tell you what the voices really say. You will do very well right where you are A little longer. I mustn't feel too hurried, Or I can't give myself to hear the voices." "Is this some trance you are withdrawing into?" "You must be very still; you mustn't talk." "I'll hardly breathe." "The voices seem to say----" "I'm waiting." "Don't! The voices seem to say: Call her Nausicaa, the unafraid Of an acquaintance made adventurously." "I let you say that--on consideration." "I don't see very well how you can help it. You want the truth. I speak but by the voices. You see they know I haven't had your name, Though what a name should matter between us----" "I shall suspect----" "Be good. The voices say: Call her Nausicaa, and take a timber That you shall find lies in the cellar charred Among the raspberries, and hew and shape it For a door-sill or other corner piece In a new cottage on the ancient spot. The life is not yet all gone out of it. And come and make your summer dwelling here, And perhaps she will come, still unafraid, And sit before you in the open door With flowers in her lap until they fade, But not come in across the sacred sill----" "I wonder where your oracle is tending. You can see that there's something wrong with it, Or it would speak in dialect. Whose voice Does it purport to speak in? Not old Grandsir's Nor Granny's, surely. Call up one of them. They have best right to be heard in this place." "You seem so partial to our great-grandmother (Nine times removed. Correct me if I err.) You will be likely to regard as sacred Anything she may say. But let me warn you, Folks in her day were given to plain speaking. You think you'd best tempt her at such a time?" "It rests with us always to cut her off." "Well then, it's Granny speaking: 'I dunnow! Mebbe I'm wrong to take it as I do.