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Yet all the while, like a low under-song, goes on his monotonous assertion of his own goodness and his own injuries.

Osman, the gardener, had trimmed the rose-bushes, had carefully cleaned the garden seats, and had swept straying leaves from the winding paths. The fountain sang its under-song above the lilies. On the highest terrace, beyond the climbing garden, the pavilion waited for the woman and man who had hidden themselves in it to go down into the darkness.

Much biography, perhaps we might say most, is hardly above the level of that 'personal talk, to which Wordsworth sagely preferred long barren silence, the flapping of the flame of his cottage fire, and the under-song of the kettle on the hob. It would not, then, have much surprised us if George Eliot had insisted that her works should remain the only commemoration of her life.

When night falls heavily, you pass your last hour in listening to the under-song of the sea and the whisper of the roaming winds among the grass. Then, if you are wise and grateful, you thank the Giver of all, and go to sleep. In the jolly greenwoods of the Midlands you may have enjoyment of another kind.

All the night long the mad gusts tore at the walls and made them vibrate; all night the terrible music rose into shrieks and died away in low moaning, and ever the savage boom of the waves made a vast under-song.

Not there the cloud-climb rock, sublime and vast, That like some giant king, o'er-glooms the hill; Nor there the pine-grove to the midnight blast Makes solemn music! But the unceasing rill To the soft wren or lark's descending trill Murmurs sweet under-song 'mid jasmine bowers.

I think of them often as artists, who know their parts in the dream-play, who know exactly their function, and how to fulfil it rightly. They sing, while you are dreaming, but it is an under-song, like the murmur of an Eastern river far off from any sea. It never disturbs, this music, but it helps you in your dream. And they are softly gay.