He could hardly see as he walked through the woodland places, but the joy and the music by which Nature celebrated her noble freedoms, the pæans of his ever-youthful mother filled his ears. The loud and deep voice, that was so clear and so heroical, made the wayfarer nod and smile at her as he took his way. Pressing ever on and on over hill and dale, through impenetrable fastnesses, by marsh and stream, he rejoiced aloud in her noble fecundity. “Sing, goddess, sing,” he chanted continually, “and I will sing to thee!” The heart of the wayfarer was entranced with gladness as he begged his bread from door to door. And as he came nearer and nearer to the streets of the great city, he began to sing to the Earth, his mother, in a wonderful kind of speech which he knew was pleasant to her ear. And she requited him with her own resonant and golden music, those strange, rapt cadences of her own childlike voice; and these cradled him in sleep, and he dreamed by the wise and gracious light of the stars. “Kiss me, ever young and gentle one,” he whispered to her, as one evening he lay down on the dry mosses of an autumnal wood. “I can scarce see thee now, my mother,” he said as he turned his eyes towards the bole of a great tree, under whose wide-spreading branches he lay; “but thy ample speech was never so great in my veins. To-night I shall dream of thee constantly, sweet and gentle virgin which hath had strange issue.” As he lay that night asleep under the great tree, the voice of the Earth, his mother, breathed in his ears. “Return, O Achilles,” it said, “to the streets of the great city, without another instant of tarrying, for in my tenderness for thee, thou brave one, I have endowed thy right hand with strength.” These words awoke the wayfarer. He arose and knelt before the gnarled trunk of the great tree which had been the pillow of his dreams. Pressing his eyes to the green moss over which the ages had passed, he said joyfully, “I heed thee, my mother. Thou who hast lain with the stars in their courses, I will bear myself as the fruit of thy caresses.” The wayfarer drove the pains of sleep from his limbs, and turned his dim eyes towards the east. “Achilles, thy son, heeds thee, my mother,” he said as the bracken began to yield to his steps; “he will not tarry until he has made the streets of the great city, so that when he returns into sanctuary he may find the strength in his right hand.” With bold and quick steps, as light as those of a deer, the wayfarer went his way through the chill dawn. When he came out into the beautiful expanse of the fields, the east shone with morning.