* * * * *

There are hours and seasons when certain of these accords are most to
the fore, when one hears best the thousand voices of things. Two or
three times in my life I have been present at the awakening of this
mysterious world. At the end of August toward midnight, when the day
has been hot, an indistinct murmur rises about the kneeling villages.
It is neither the sound of rivers, nor of springs, nor of the wind,
nor of animals cropping the grass, nor of cattle rubbing their chains
against the cribs, nor of uneasy watchdogs, nor of birds, nor of the
falling of the looms of the weavers. The chords are as sweet to the
ear, as the glow of dawn is sweet to the eye. There is stirring a
boundless and peaceful world in which the blades of grass lean toward
one another till morning, and the dew rustles imperceptibly, and the
seeds at each moment's beat raise the whole surface of the plain.
It is the soul alone which can apprehend these other souls, this
flower-dust joy of the corollas, these calls, and these silences that
create the divine Unknown. It is as if one were suddenly transported
to a strange country where one is enchanted by langorous words, even
though one does not understand very clearly their meaning.

Nevertheless I penetrate more deeply into the meaning whispered
by these things than into that hidden in an idiom with which I am
unfamiliar. I feel that I understand and that it would not require a
very great effort to translate the thought of these obscure souls, and
to note in a concrete fashion some of their manifestations. Perhaps
poetry sometimes actually does this. It has happened that mentally I
have answered this indistinct murmur, just as I have succeeded by my
silence in answering distinctly a sweetheart's questions.