Pageant of Summer | Page 9

Thence the call has come without a moment's pause, "crake,
crake," till the thick hedge seems filled with it. Tits have visited the
apple tree over my head, a wren has sung in the willow, or rather on a
dead branch projecting lower down than the leafy boughs, and a robin
across under the elms in the opposite hedge. Elms are a favourite tree
of robins--not the upper branches, but those that grow down the trunk,
and are the first to have leaves in spring.
The yellowhammer is the most persistent individually, but I think the
blackbirds when listened to are the masters of the fields. Before one can
finish, another begins, like the summer ripples succeeding behind each
other, so that the melodious sound merely changes its position. Now
here, now in the corner, then across the field, again in the distant copse,
where it seems about to sink, when it rises again almost at hand. Like a
great human artist, the blackbird makes no effort, being fully conscious
that his liquid tone cannot be matched. He utters a few delicious notes,
and carelessly quits the green stage of the oak till it pleases him to sing
again. Without the blackbird, in whose throat the sweetness of the
green fields dwells, the days would be only partly summer. Without the
violet, all the bluebells and cowslips could not make a spring, and
without the blackbird, even the nightingale would be but half welcome.
It is not yet noon, these songs have been ceaseless since dawn; this

evening, after the yellowhammer has sung the sun down, when the
moon rises and the faint stars appear, still the cuckoo will call, and the
grasshopper lark, the landrail's "crake, crake" will echo from the mound,
a warbler or a blackcap will utter his notes, and even at the darkest of
the summer night the swallows will hardly sleep in their nests. As the
morning sky grows blue, an hour before the sun, up will rise the larks,
singing and audible now, the cuckoo will recommence, and the
swallows will start again on their tireless journey. So that the songs of
the summer birds are as ceaseless as the sound of the waterfall which
plays day and night.
I cannot leave it; I must stay under the old tree in the midst of the long
grass, the luxury of the leaves, and the song in the very air. I seem as if
I could feel all the glowing life the sunshine gives and the south wind
calls to being. The endless grass, the endless leaves, the immense
strength of the oak expanding, the unalloyed joy of finch and blackbird;
from all of them I receive a little. Each gives me something of the pure
joy they gather for themselves. In the blackbird's melody one note is
mine; in the dance of the leaf shadows the formed maze is for me,
though the motion is theirs; the flowers with a thousand faces have
collected the kisses of the morning. Feeling with them, I receive some,
at least, of their fulness of life. Never could I have enough; never stay
long enough--whether here or whether lying on the shorter sward under
the sweeping and graceful birches, or on the thyme-scented hills. Hour
after hour, and still not enough. Or walking the footpath was never long
enough, or my strength sufficient to endure till the mind was weary.
The exceeding beauty of the earth, in her splendour of life, yields a new
thought with every petal. The hours when the mind is absorbed by
beauty are the only hours when we really live, so that the longer we can
stay among these things so much the more is snatched from inevitable
Time. Let the shadow advance upon the dial--I can watch it with
equanimity while it is there to be watched. It is only when the shadow
is not there, when the clouds of winter cover it, that the dial is terrible.
The invisible shadow goes on and steals from us. But now, while I can
see the shadow of the tree and watch it slowly gliding along the surface
of the grass, it is mine. These are the only hours that are not
wasted--these hours that absorb the soul and fill it with beauty. This is

real life, and all else is illusion, or mere endurance. Does this reverie of
flowers and waterfall and song form an ideal, a human ideal, in the
mind? It does; much the same ideal that Phidias sculptured of man and
woman filled with a godlike sense of the violet fields of Greece,
beautiful beyond thought, calm as my turtle-dove before the lurid
lightning of the unknown. To be beautiful and to be calm, without
mental fear, is the ideal of nature.