ROUND A LONDON COPSE. 155 



in the common on the opposite side of the road. It 

 is remarkable that one season there seems more of 

 one kind of bird than the next. The year alluded to, 

 for instance, in this copse was the wood-pigeons' year. 

 But one season previously the copse seemed to belong 

 to the missel-thrushes. 



Early in the March mornings I used to wake as the 

 workmen's trains went rumbling by to the great City, 

 to see on the ceiling by the window a streak of sun- 

 light, tinted orange by the vapour through which the 

 level beams had passed. Something in the sense of 

 morning lifts the heart up to the sun. The light, the 

 air, the waving branches speak; the earth and life 

 seem boundless at that moment. In this it is the 

 same on the verge of the artificial City as when the 

 rays come streaming through the pure atmosphere of 

 the Downs. While thus thinking, suddenly there 

 rang out three clear, trumpet-like notes from a tree at 

 the edge of the copse by the garden. A softer song 

 followed, and then again the same three notes, whose 

 wild sweetness echoed through the wood. 



The voice of the missel-thrush sounded not only 

 close at hand and in the room, but repeated itself as 

 it floated away, as the bugle-call does. He is the 

 trumpeter of spring : Lord of March, his proud call 

 challenges the woods ; there are none who can answer. 

 Listen for the missel-thrush : when he sings the snow 

 may fall, the rain drift, but not for long ; the violets 

 are near at hand. The nest was in a birch visible 

 from the garden, and that season seemed to be the 

 missel-thrush's. Another year the cuckoos had 

 possession. 



