Through the midst of the dingle under shadows, yet with her breast bared to those amber shafts of sunshine that fell upon it, came Meavy, with many a curl and turn and leisurely dawdling in deep pool. Fern fronds, fingered with light, bent over the face of the water; fresh-coloured flowers of agrimony rose above; flash of golden-rod and the seeding spires of foxgloves mingled there; while a ripple of filched fire from the sun-shaft broke the glass of each smooth pool, and heaven’s blue was also reflected from many a rift in the veil of the leaves. Bramble and woodrush spanned the stream and nodded, linked together with a spider’s trembling web; by broken, subterranean channels the river held her way; light, sobered into half light where moss sponges soaked crystal water and golden sunshine together, penetrated through the heaviest shade; darkness only dwelt in the deepest rifts and crannies and upon the black, submerged vegetation of the rocks. Out of these mysteries arose new songs and whispers, where the stream slid stealthily forth from her secret places and the hidden homes of unseen things that she also blessed and forgot not. Here the sun stars, catching upon her convex ripples, were reflected and thrown upward, to dance and flash unexpected brightness into gloom, or set wonderful radiance upon the under-face of leaves. Life, in shape of bird and beast and fish, prospered here; and glittering insects--ichneumons, that hung motionless like golden beads in some beam of light; butterflies, that came and went; and long-legged spiders and great ants--likewise justified themselves. The trees were garlanded with ivy, polypody, and many mosses, that hung in festoons and fell even to the dim, moist river-ways, where shy flowers blossomed in shade, and the filmy fern spread its small loveliness upon the stone. Here, at the hour near summer twilight, when life ranges at full stress and passion before rest, one may see, in the low red light that pierces to each inviolate place, some vision of the shepherd god aglowing; and through the wail of insects, under the melody of ripple and frond, there steals sweet warbling of the syrinx at Pan’s own puckered lips. Music full of the unfulfilled he plays--music fraught with world sorrow and world joy. Now it is mellow as the dying day, now tender and triumphant as the dawn; but it is never satisfied; it is never satisfying; because it whispers of precious things felt but not known; it hungers after the ultimate mystery; it thirsts for the secrets behind the sunset.