THE FAERY YEAR 



then we do not hear again the anthem, only scattered 

 solos here and there. The strength of some of the 

 singers in one of these April anthems is striking : 

 the whole lay is not always developed at the first 

 arrival of the bird, but certain notes seem more 

 ringing now than later in the season, when each bird 

 is sure of his full song. 



The song of the willow wren has always made 

 strong appeal to me. It is partly through association 

 even to think of him is to feel the first sappy 

 coppice days, when the red-ringed oaks are going 

 down before the saw, and the sound and aroma of 

 bark-stripping are in the air. But the song is good, 

 too, for its own sake. It has a distinctive quality 

 of meekness and weakness, so perhaps necessarily is 

 tinged with pathos. It is the same in the song- 

 flutter of the tree pipit, another bird of passage 

 which came in with the willow wrens, and is settling 

 in its summer haunts a favourite spot being the 

 railway embankment facing south. Yet the willow 

 wren's and the tree pipit's songs are no threnodies. 

 It is the joy akin with sadness, the sadness akin with 

 joy, that we feel through and through us in the 

 willow wren's song. It is with English scenery as 

 with English bird-song. As Ruskin puts it : 

 " What is most musical will always be found most 

 melancholy ; and no real beauty can be obtained 

 without a touch of sadness. Whenever the beau- 

 tiful loses its melancholy, it degenerates into 

 prettiness." The same union appeals to us in the 

 song of the redbreast, though here the pathetic 

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