“It soared, a bird, it held its flight, a swift pure cry, soar silver orb it leaped serene, speeding, sustained...”

“What birds were they? (...) He listened to the cries: like the squeak of mice be- hind the wainscot : a shrill twofold note. But the notes were long and shrill and whirring, unlike the cry of vermin, falling a third or a fourth and trilled as the flying beaks clove the air. Their cry was shrill and clear and fine and falling like threads of silken light unwound from whirring spools. ”

“The voices blend and fuse in clouded silence: silence that is infinite of space: and swiftly, silently the sound is wafted over regions of cycles of cycles of generations that have lived.”

“When a man is born...there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets.”

“And if he had judged her harshly? If her life were a simple rosary of hours, her life simple and strange as a bird's life, gay in the morning, restless all day, tired at sundown? Her heart simple and willful as a bird's heart?”

“When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets.”

“He walked there, reading in the evening and heard the cries of the boys' lines at their play, young cries in the quiet evening. He was their rector: his reign was mild.”