"I hear an echo," said the Will: "I hear an echo; but so, too, I can hear the authentic voice of the sea in a hollow shell. Authentic! ... when I know well that the murmur is no eternal voice, no whisper of the wave made one with pearly silence, but only the sound of my flowing blood heard idly in the curves of ear and shell?" "Ah!" ... cried the Body, "it is a lie, that cruel word of science. The shell must ever murmur of the sea; if not, at least let us dream that it does. Soon, soon we shall have no dream left. How am I to know that _all_, that everything, is not but an idle noise in my ears? How am I to know that the Hope of the Will, and the Voice of the Soul, and the message of the Word, and the Whisper of the Eternal Spirit, are not one and all but a mocking echo in that shell which for me is the Shell of Life, but may be only the cold inhabitation of my dreams?" "Yet were it not for these echoes," the Soul answered, "life would be intolerable for you, as for you too, my friend." The Will smiled scornfully. "Dreams are no comfort, no solace, no relief from weariness even, if one knows them to be no more than the spray above the froth of a distempered mind." Suddenly one of us began in a low voice a melancholy little song:-- I hear the sea-song of the blood in my heart, I hear the sea-song of the blood in my ears; And I am far apart, And lost in the years. But when I lie and dream of that which was Before the first man's shadow flitted on the grass-- I am stricken dumb With sense of that to come. Is then this wildering sea-song but a part Of the old song of the mystery of the years-- Or only the echo of the tired Heart And of Tears? But none answered, and so again we walked onward, silent. The wind had fallen, and in the noon-heat we began to grow weary. It was with relief that we saw the gleam of water between the branches of a little wood of birches, which waded towards it through a tide of bracken. Beyond the birks shimmered a rainbow; a stray cloud had trailed from glen to glen, and suddenly broken among the tree-tops. "There goes Yesterday!" cried the Body laughingly--alluding to the saying that the morning rainbow is the ghost of the day that passed at dawn. The next moment he broke into a fragment of song:-- Brother and Sister, wanderers they Out of the Golden Yesterday-- Thro' the dusty Now and the dim To-morrow Hand-in-hand go Joy and Sorrow. "Yes, joy and sorrow, O glad Body," exclaimed the Will--"but it is the joy only that is vain as the rainbow, which has no other message. It should be called the Bow of Sorrow." "Not so," said the Soul gently, "or, if so, not as you mean, dear friend:-- It is not Love that gives the clearest sight: For out of bitter tears, and tears unshed, Riseth the Rainbow of Sorrow overhead, And 'neath the Rainbow is the clearest light. The Will smiled:-- "I too must have my say, dear poets:--