Sweet are the sounds that mingle from afar, 280 Heard by calm lakes, as peeps the folding star, Where the duck dabbles 'mid the rustling sedge, And feeding pike starts from the water's edge, Or the swan stirs the reeds, his neck and bill Wetting, that drip upon the water still; 285 And heron, as resounds the trodden shore, Shoots upward, darting his long neck before.

He found an old sedge on the meadow, which was strong and tough; and out of this he began to braid a knapsack.

He knew the sedges along the bank with their nodding tassels and stiff lance-like leaves, the feathery grasses, the velvet moss upon the wet stones, the sea-green lichen on boulder or tree-trunk.

Bunches of bright yellow Cassia blossoms dangled close to our heads; white Ipomoeas scrambled over them again; and broad-leaved sedges, five feet high, carrying on bright brown flower-heads, like those of our Wood-rush, blue, black, and white shot for seeds.

The river warbles soft and runs With fuller curve and sleeker line, Though on the winter-blackened hedge Twigs of unbudding iron shine, And trampled still the river sedge.

All day my mule with patient tread Had moved along the plain, Now o'er the lava's ashen bed, Now through the sprouting grain, Across the torrent's rocky lair, Beneath the aloe-hedge, Where yellow broom makes sweet the air, And waves the purple sedge.

Then as he stood with his hand resting against a tree trunk, peering forward, a curious little head with bright crimson eyes divided the sedge or reeds growing in the water, its owner looking out to see if there was any danger; and as it looked, Robin could see that the bird's beak seemed to be continued right up into a fiat red plate between its eyes.

" So went they, following a narrow track that wound betwixt slow-stirring sedge, past trees huddled and distorted that seemed to writhe and shiver in the clammy air until, beyond the swamp, they came to a place of rocks where ragged crags loomed high and vague before them.