IN PAIRING TIME 137 



singer sits unmoving on the top of hedge or bush or 

 tree. " Come and be married, an you will," it seems 

 to say in the first or second week of January ; "but 

 at your leisure ; we do not nest till May ; and May 

 is far away, is very far away." And then he sits, 

 stone-still, looking out over the flat grass fields and 

 crooked river, as he will sit and look and sing until 

 November, if he cease even then. In due time he 

 gets paired, and the brood is reared ; for Corn- 

 buntings thrive in our Mersey flats. It is to be hoped 

 that his good-lady has joy of his singing, for she has 

 small profit by his activities. Yet, in his song he is 

 active beyond measure a steady, grinding, all but 

 year-long activity, doled out regularly and deliberately 

 in portions all of the same kind and volume. There 

 is no song like that song. You may stand 

 by the hour trying to fix it by similes, but it 

 will elude you. Hudson cites Robert Gray as 

 writing : " It puts you in mind of a jingling chain 

 or the sound of broken glass." That is excellent. 

 Hudson himself has likened it to a "note broken up into 

 splinters, or issuing out of a bundle of minute wind- 

 pipes." That, too, is admirable. And yet, the closer 

 the simile is driven, the more evident it becomes that 

 there is an outstanding something that it fails to 

 cover. However that may be, lying one brilliant 

 summer day by the river, and hearing song answer 

 song across the surrounding meadows, there flashed 

 through my mind the memory of "the brittle fleet" 

 that on the reef of gold 



" Touch'd, clink'd, and clash'd, and vanish'd . . " 

 and I seemed satisfied. Returning home, I took down 



