BENEDICITE 171 



starting out from same dark recess, stood, a red- 

 breasted sentry, to demand the pass- word; while the 

 Willow-wren, newly come from the south, sang for 

 the joy of home-coming a song winsome with wistful 

 tenderness beyond the singing of all birds. But it 

 was not for these we sought the high beeches. There 

 had come to us, half-muffled, as from some side chapel 

 in the woodland aisles, the voice of a singer more 

 accordant to our mood. Half a year had past since 

 last we had heard it. But during the dark days 

 there was no image more intimately clear to the 

 mind's eye than that of the banished Wood-wren. 

 And it was ever thus a wandering minstrel in green- 

 domed spaces high in air, a little passionate pilgrim 

 of woodland song. 



We had not long to search the softly glowing 

 green ere the flutter of wings from one bough to 

 another revealed the wanderer returned. For he 

 loves not to face the broad-stretched, formless sky ; 

 but grasping some lower bough, sings to the shifting 

 pattern of leaf and light above him. I know not what 

 there should be in this small bird to give it such 

 earnestness in song. Watch it as it stands with 

 tense, straightened legs, gripping the bough with 

 slender feet, the body drawn up, the head thrown 

 back ; and as it sings it addresses itself now toward 

 one side, now toward another, the wings quivering, 

 the body shaken with the stress of song. The song 

 itself seems only partly to express the spirit that 

 prompts it. Opening with several detached notes 

 of the same volume and pitch, it passes into a long 

 trill the notes of which follow with ever-increasing 

 rapidity, though never so as to be slurred or to lose 



