For a day or two, at Lydiard Constantine, Philip roamed with me up and down hedgerows, through copses, around pools, as he had done in other Aprils, but though he found many nests he took not one egg, not even a thrush’s egg that was pure white and would have been unique in his collection, or in mine; neither was I allowed to take it. Moreover, after the first two or three days he only came reluctantly--found hardly any nests--quarrelled furiously with the most faithful of the Lydiard boys for killing a thrush (though it was a good shot) with a catapult. He now went about muttering unintelligible things in a voice like a clergyman. He pushed through a copse saying magnificently: “Unfathomable sea whose waves are years.” He answered an ordinary question by Aunt Rachel with: “Away, away, from men and towns, To the wild wood and the downs.” Tears stood in his eyes while he exclaimed: “Grief made the young Spring wild, and she threw down Her kindling buds, as if she Autumn were, Or they dead leaves.” Like a somnambulist he paced along, chanting: “Earth, Ocean, Air, beloved brotherhood....” The sight of a solitary cottage would draw from him those lines beginning: “A portal as of shadowy adamant....” Over and over again, in a voice somewhere between that of Irving and a sheep, he repeated: “From what Hyrcanian glen or frozen hill, Or piny promontory of the Arctic main, Or utmost islet inaccessible....” With a frenzy as of one who suffered wounds, insults, hunger and thirst and pecuniary loss, for Liberty’s sweet sake, he cried out to the myriad emerald leaves: “Oh, that the wise from their bright minds would kindle Such lamps within the dome of this dim world, That the pale name of _Priest_ might shrink and dwindle Into the _Hell_ from which it first was hurled....” He used to say to me, falling from the heights of recitation: “Shelley lived in the time of the Duke of Wellington. He was the son of a rich old baronet in Sussex, but he had nothing to do with his parents as soon as he could escape from them. He wrote the greatest lyrics that ever were--that is, songs not meant to be sung, and no musician could write good enough music for them, either. He was tall, and brave, and gentle. He feared no man, and he almost loved death. He was beautiful. His hair was long, and curled, and had been nearly black, but it was going grey when he died. He was drowned in the Mediterranean at thirty. The other poets burnt his body on the sea-shore, but one of them saved the heart and buried it at Rome with the words on the stone above it, _Cor cordium_, Heart of hearts. It is not right, it is not right....”