In that long moment--for there in the other world it was but a brief leaning on their elbows of the drowsy gods while the fans of Immortal Sleep for a second stayed the vast waves of Peace--the divine messengers, or were they the listening powers and dominions of the earth, fulfilled destiny. From every flower-nation, from every people by far waters, from every tribe in dim woods and the wilderness, from every clan habiting the most far hills beyond the ever-receding pale blue horizons, song was taken as stars are pluckt away from the Night by the grey fingers of the Dawn. The Rose breathed no more a flusht magic of sound; the Lily no more exhaled a foamwhite cadence. Silence was come upon the wild chant of orchids in old, forgotten woods; stillness upon the tinkling cymbals of the little hands of the dim, myriad, incalculable host of blossom; a hush upon the songs of meadow-flowers; a spell upon the singing of honeysuckles in the white dews at the rising of the moon. Everywhere, from all the green tribes, from all the glowing nations of Flowry, from each and every of the wandering folk of the Reed, the Moss, and the Lichen, from all the Clans of the Grass, the added loveliness of song was taken. Silence fell upon one and all: a strange and awful stillness came upon the woods and valleys. It was then that the God of Youth, wandering through the hushed world, took the last song of a single rose that in a secret place had not yet heard the common doom, and with his breath gave it a body, and a pulse to its heart, and fashioned for it a feather-covering made of down of the bog-cotton and the soft undersides of alder-leaf and olive. Then, from a single blade of grass that still whispered in a twilight hollow, he made a like marvel, to be a mate to the first, and sent out both into the green world, to carry song to the woods and the valleys, the hills and the wildernesses, the furthest shores, the furthest isles. Thus was the nightingale created, the first bird, the herald of all the small clans of the bushes that have kept wild-song in the world, and are our delight. But in the hearts of certain of the green tribes a sullen anger endured. So the mysterious Hand which had taken song and cadence away punished these sullen ones. From some, fragrance also was taken. There were orchid-queens of forest-loveliness from whom all fragrance suddenly passed like smoke: there were white delicate phantoms among the grasses, from whom sweet odour was lifted as summer dew: there were nomads of the hillways and gypsies of the plain to whom were given the rankness of the waste, the smell of things evil, of corruption, of the grave. But to some, beautiful rebels of the peoples of the Reed, the Grass, and the Fern, the doom went out that henceforth their place should be in the waters ... the running waters of streams and rivers, the quiet waters of pools and lakes, the troubled waters of the seas along the coasts of the world, the ocean depths.