As they swim the deep, paint in shells the shore,— Nay, grains of corn themselves, an endless store, Remain distinguishable, one and all; Are known apart by learnéd in such lore. Art works after one pattern, and by rule; Nature as the mood inspires, not a school. She is certain in idea; diverse In embodiment; never same and dull. Echo Bk. IV. vv. 525-536, 549-596 Sound, voice are bodies. Though not for the hand To grasp, sense feels them, acts at their command. They wind into the ear, and strike the drum; Hark! response, as to a conductor’s wand. The voice even can hurt, as fist, or saw. In full volume, hoarse, grating on the jaw, Jostling its way in haste to worry through, It leaves the path it travels rough and raw. And no less bodily a spoken word; When moulded, and dressed, to be rightly heard, And winged by that arch modeller, the tongue, It slips through the lips, and careers, a bird. If the length to be traversed is unfair, Symmetry is marred; speakers must prepare For dazed confusion in their audience, And only a blurred rumbling in the air. Then set a Herald in a market place. For him thousands of eyes gaze from one face; And he flings at the whole a single word, That each will drink-in as his special grace. It multiplies, and with the hearers; all Receive stamped facsimiles, to recall Both form and sound, distinct, as that went forth; Each can claim his own for original. Human ears are the goal; and when no ear Is reached, after roaming everywhere In vain for shelter, the poor thing expires, To flit a ghostly leaf, dead, shrunk and sere. Or chance may be that it collides with rock; When—as with pebble that recoils—the shock Returns the voice thither whence it had come, And so unchanged that it appears to mock. Natural the cause, effect; the surprise, When in lone spots a company’s loud cries After stragglers on dark hills, bring back nought But old words in old order as replies. Where a height faced height, I have known a shout To gambol between in a joyous rout, And six or seven times reverberate; Like ball thrown to and fro in play about. Nothing is out of Nature’s course, the mode In which She acts; but Fancy loves to load Being with mysteries; not learn the laws Within our ken that rule Earth, our abode. Thus, a charmed husbandman will vigils keep, Imagining far echoes breaking sleep, ’Mid silences that seem to hold their breath, To be Pan come, half God, half Beast, with leap, And rustle of his bristly, pine-wreathed head— Drawn lip running o’er shrilling pipe—to lead His troop, goat-footed Satyrs, Nymphs, and Fauns, Till cliffs and caves reply to chords and reed. He deems that shy Powers, as falls the Dark, In solitudes—no prying crowds to mark— Fill woods and hills with music, wind and stringed, That he hears till the day-star wakes the lark.