256 BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE 



tory^' with green net and a good store of pins, 

 shall I ever again hear thy breezy music, and 

 see thee among the green leaves, beautiful with 

 steel-blue and creamy-white body, and dim purple 

 over and vivid red underwings? 



The bird of the pasture-land is singing still, 

 perhaps, but all at once I have ceased to hear 

 him, for something has come to lift me above his 

 low grassy level, something faint and at first only 

 the suspicion of a sound; then a silvery lisping, 

 far off and aerial, touching the sense as lightly 

 as the wind-borne down of dandelion. 



If any place for any soul there be 

 Disrobed and disentrammelled, 



doubtless it Is from such a place and such a soul 

 that this sublimated music falls. The singer, one 

 can imagine, has never known or has forgotten 

 earth; and if it is visible to him, how small It 

 must seem from that altitude, "spinning like a 

 fretful midge" beneath him In the vast void I 



It Is the lark singing In the blue Infinite heaven, 

 at this distance with something ethereal and 

 heavenly in his voice; but now the wide circling 



