In the darkness something was happening at last. A voice had begun to sing. It was very far away and Digory found it hard to decide from what direction it was coming. Sometimes it seemed to come from all directions at once. Sometimes he almost thought it was coming out of the earth beneath them. Its lower notes were deep enough to be the voice of the earth herself. There were no words. There was hardly even a tune. But it was, beyond comparison, the most beautiful noise he had ever heard. It was so beautiful he could hardly bear it. The horse seemed to like it too; he gave the sort of whinney a horse would give if, after years of being a cab-horse, it found itself back in the old field where it had played as a foal, and saw someone whom it remembered and loved coming across the field to bring it a lump of sugar.
"Gawd!" said the Cabby. "Ain't it lovely?"
Then two wonders happened at the same moment. One was that the voice was suddenly joined by other voices; more voices than you could possibly count. They were in harmony with it, but far higher up the scale: cold, tingling, silvery voices. The second wonder was that the blackness overhead, all at once, was blazing with stars. They didn't come out gently one by one, as they do on a summer evening. One moment there had been nothing but darkness; next moment a thousand, thousand points of light leaped out - single stars, constellations, and planets, brighter and bigger than any in our world. There were no clouds. The new stars and the new voices began at exactly the same time. If you had seen and heard it, as Digory did, you would have felt quite certain that it was the stars themselves which were singing, and that it was the First Voice, the deep one, which had made them appear and made them sing.
"Glory be!" said the Cabby. "I'd ha' been a better man all my life if I'd known there were things like this."
黑暗中终于有了动静。远方,一个声音开始歌唱。迪格雷分辨不清在哪个方向。有时,声音似乎从四面八方同时传过来,有时又好像就在他们的脚下。这声音低沉得犹如大地发出的声音。没有歌词,也没有旋律,却是迪格雷听到过的最美妙的声音。那声音如此动人,使他难以忍受。那匹马似乎也喜欢;它低低地嘶叫着,仿佛拉了多年的车以后.又回到了童年时代嬉戏的故乡,看见所记得和所爱的人拿着糖块,穿过田野向它走来。
“天哪,”马车夫说,“真好听啊!”
此刻,两个奇迹同时发生了。一个是,突然间,数不清的冷峻、战栗、银铃般的声音掺合到那个声音之中,与之和谐地组合在一起,但音量却高得多。第二个是,头上的黑暗中突然群星闪烁。不是夏夜中一颗接一颗悄悄出现的星星,而是在一团漆黑之中,霎时问跳跃出的成千上万颗恒星、星丛和行星,比我们世界里看到的要大得多、亮得多。没有一朵云。新的星星和新的声音同时出现。如果你像迪格雷一样亲眼看见和亲耳听见的话,你会相当肯定地觉得是星星自己在唱歌,而唤出它们并使它们歌唱的是那低沉的第一个声音。
“多奇妙啊!”马车夫说,“如果我早知道世上还有这么美好的事,我这辈子就会做一个更好的人。”