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On the roof the weather-cock creaks. The rain-pipe gurgles; the Angelus sounds. When the wind comes from the east, the distant bells of the villages on the other bank of the river give answer. The sparrows foregathered in the ivy-clad wall make a deafening noise, from which three or four voices, always the same, ring out more shrilly than the others, just as in the games of a band of children. A pigeon coos at the top of a chimney. The child abandons himself to the lullaby of these sounds.
Romain Rolland, Jean-Christophe, trans. Gilbert Cannan, Holt, 1910, p. 14.
TIME: mid-19th c.
PLACE: a small town on the Rhine in Germany
CIRCUMSTANCE: a baby listens to the sounds outside his room
The frogs croaked, and in the meadows the melodious fluting of the toads arose. The shrill tremolo of the grasshoppers seemed to answer the twinkling of the stars. The wind rustled softly in the branches of the alders. From the hills above the river there came down the sweet light song of a nightingale.
Romain Rolland, Jean-Christophe, trans. Gilbert Cannan, Holt, 1910, p. 89.
TIME: mid-19th c.
PLACE: the countryside around a village on the Rhine in Germany
CIRCUMSTANCE: Jean-Christophe and his uncle walk in the meadow
They would sit down on the grass, and after a few moments of silence Gottfried would talk to him about the stars and the clouds; he taught him to distinguish the breathing of the earth, air, and water, the songs, cries, and sounds of the little worlds of flying, creeping, hopping, and swimming things swarming in the darkness, and the signs of rain and fine weather, and the countless instruments of the symphony of the night.
Romain Rolland, Jean-Christophe, trans. Gilbert Cannan, Holt, 1910, p. 90.
TIME: mid-19th c.
PLACE: the countryside near a village on the Rhine in Germany
CIRCUMSTANCE: a young boy listens to his uncle
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