street. A short distance from the church and farther back was the
priest's house, set in a bewilderment of trees and vines and shrubbery
from which window, chimney, roof, and cornice peep out as if with
inquisitive desire to see what manner of world lies beyond the forest.

Up into the silent skies
Where the sunbeams veil the star,
Up,--beyond the clouds afar,
Where no discords ever mar,
Where rests peace that never dies.

Here, amid the "songs and silences," he wrote "just when the mood
came, with little of study and less of art," as he said, his thoughts
leaping spontaneously into rhymes and rhythms which he called verses,
objecting to the habit of his friends of giving them "the higher title
of poems," never dreaming of "taking even lowest place in the rank of
authors."

I sing with a voice too low
To be heard beyond to-day,
In minor keys of my people's woe,
But my songs will pass away.

To-morrow hears them not--
To-morrow belongs to fame--
My songs, like the birds', will be forgot,
And forgotten shall be my name.

But a touch of prophecy adds the thought: