"
The oldest sounds in the world, Mr. Yeats tells us are wind and water
and the curlew: and of the curlew he says--
"O curlew, cry no more in the air,
Or only to the waters of the West;
Because your crying brings to my mind
Passion-dimmed eyes and long heavy hair
That was shaken out over my breast:
There is enough evil in the crying of wind."
In all this you hear the crying of the wind and the swiftly borne scream
of the curlew on it, and you know that lake water will not be far away.
This magic power of bringing busy city people out of all their
surroundings into the green heart of the forest and the moorland, and
letting them hear the sound of water there, is common to them both.
Fiona Macleod is a lover and worshipper of beauty. Long before her, the
Greeks had taught the world their secret, and the sweet spell had
penetrated many hearts beyond the pale of Greece. It was Augustine who
said, "Late I have loved thee, oh beauty, so old and yet so new, late I
have loved thee." And Marius the Epicurean, in Pater's fine phrase, "was
one who was made perfect by love of visible beauty.
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