tinged the pure notes with glad or mournful visions, like wine
poured into water; now the voice fell and lingered, like a clear
stream among rocks, pathetic, appealing, stirring a deep hunger of
the spirit, and at the same time hinting at a hope, at a secret
almost within one's grasp. How can one find words to express a
thing so magical, so inexpressible? But it left me feeling as
though to sing thus was the one thing worth doing in the world,
because it seemed to interpret, to reveal, to sustain, to console--
it was as though one opened a door in a noisy, dusty street, and
saw through it a deep and silent glen, with woodlands stooping to a
glimmering stream, with a blue stretch of plain beyond, and an
expanse of sunny seas on the rim of the sky.

I have had similar experiences before. I have looked in a gallery
at picture after picture--bright, soulless, accomplished things--
and asked myself how it was possible for men and women to spend
their time so elaborately to no purpose; and then one catches sight
of some little sketch--a pool in the silence of high summer, the
hot sun blazing on tall trees full of leaf, and rich water-plants,
with a single figure in a moored boat, musing dreamily; and at once
one is transported into a region of thrilled wonder. What is it all
about? What is this sudden glimpse into a life so rich and strange?
In what quiet country is it all enacted, what land of sweet
visions? What do the tall trees and the sleeping pool hide from me,
and in what romantic region of joy and sadness does the dreamer
muse for ever, in the long afternoon, so full of warmth and
fragrance and murmurous sound? That is the joy of art, of the
symbol--that it remains and rests within itself, in a world that
seems, for a moment, more real and true than the clamorous and
obtrusive world we move in.