He remembered the verses! Yes,
this was the "underbrush" which the poetess had described: the gloom
above and below, the light that seemed blown through it like the wind,
the suggestion of hidden life beneath this tangled luxuriance, which she
alone had penetrated,--all this was here. But, more than that, here was
the atmosphere that she had breathed into the plaintive melody of her
verse. It did not necessarily follow that Mr. Hamlin's translation of
her sentiment was the correct one, or that the ideas her verses had
provoked in his mind were at all what had been hers: in his easy
susceptibility he was simply thrown into a corresponding mood of
emotion and relieved himself with song. One of the verses he had already
associated in his mind with the rhythm of an old plantation melody, and
it struck his fancy to take advantage of the solitude to try its effect.
Humming to himself, at first softly, he at last grew bolder, and let his
voice drift away through the stark pillars of the sylvan colonnade till
it seemed to suffuse and fill it with no more effort than the light
which strayed in on either side.
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