358 THE SKY-LARK. 



Higher still and higher 



From the earth thou springest, 

 Like a cloud of fire 

 The blue deep thou wingest, 

 And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest. 



The pale purple even 



Melts around thy flight ; 

 Like a star of heaven 

 In the broad daylight 

 Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight. 



What thou art we know not 



What is most like thee ? 

 From the rainbow clouds there flow not 



Drops so bright to see. 

 As from thy presence showers a rain of melody." 



This reminds me of Tennyson's beautiful word-painted 

 picture of " Spring " — 



" Now wings the woodland loud and long, 

 The distance takes a lovelier hue, 

 And, drowned in yonder living blue, 

 The lark becomes a sightless song." 



For on a clear day at the close of blustering March I have 

 stood and watched the little sky-lark mount by fluttering 

 bounds until he became an almost sightless speck high up in 

 the azure blue — of what we reverently call heaven — seeing 

 nothing but a speck, yet hearing that exquisitely sweet and 

 cheerful " sightless song." I have stood and listened to it for 

 half an hour at a time in rapt delight, which is corroborated by 

 Mr TJre, of Dundee, who, in his " Notes of a Naturalist," 

 says — " The lark's song is unequalled for variety, power, 

 duration, and sweetness, when not too near. Struck by the 

 fine song of one when high up, but still ascending, I took out 

 my watch and sat on a bank. It was half an hour before he 

 alighted. Some may sing longer, but this was the best and 

 longest sonof I ever heard." 



Note. — Thomson says, " The waste of music is the voice of love. " And yet 

 " an Edinburgh poulterer got an order to provide 400 larks for lark pie for 

 luncheon at the opening of the Forth Bridge on March 4th, 1890. The 

 bridge was formally opened by the Prince of Wales. The citizens of 

 London do not patronise poulterers who deal in dead larks. After 

 sacrificing 4-00 larks for such a gluttonous purpose, need we wonder if our 

 best songster is getting scarce. We might as easily spare a prince or a 

 duke as 400 of our cheerful skylarks. This little fact, along with that of 57 

 human lives being lost by accident during the seven years the bridge was 

 in building might be added to its statistics. 



