A WOOD WREN AT WELLS 115 



on the sight by a vivid contrast in colours, as by 

 a splendid scarlet or shining yellow flower bloom- 

 ing solitary where all else is green. The effect 

 produced by the wood wren is totally different ; 

 the strain does not contrast with, but is comple- 

 mentary to, the " tremulous cadence low " of in- 

 animate nature in the high woods, of wind- swayed 

 branches and pattering of rain and lisping and 

 murmuring of innumerable leaves — the elemental 

 sounds out of which it has been fashioned. In a 

 sense it may be called a trivial and a monotonous 

 song — the strain that is like a long tremulous cry, 

 repeated again and again without variation ; but 

 it is really beyond criticism — one would have to 

 begin by depreciating the music of the wind. It 

 is a voice of the beechen woods in summer, of the 

 far-up cloud of green, translucent leaves, with open 

 spaces full of green shifting sunlight and shadow. 

 Though resonant and far-reaching it does not strike 

 you as loud, but rather as the diffused sound of the 

 wind in the foliage concentrated and made clear — a 

 voice that has light and shade, rising and passing 

 like the wind, changing as it flows, and quivering 

 like a wind-fluttered leaf. It is on account of this 

 harmony that it is not trivial, and that the ear 

 never grows tired of listening to it : sooner would 



