Winter in the Marshes. 9 



Vandal axe of the woodman, where the tangled thickets 

 shelter many a shy bird that shrinks from the ways of 

 man, where the boughs in summer are draped with 

 woodbine, where the ground is dense with meadow- 

 sweet and marestail, thick with clustering bracken and 

 heavy with the breath of flowers — a few dead leaves 

 rustle among tattered boughs, and all the rest is bare. 

 The water-violet lights no more the sullen ditches with 

 its peerless bloom ; closed are the bright blue eyes of 

 the forget-me-not ; lost is all the perfume of the 

 flowers. 



The sedge-birds that wove their nests among the 

 reeds ; the warblers that hid their fragile habitations 

 in the shelter of the grass, have vanished with the 

 summer. 



There are a few tenants still that linger in the 

 marshes. The snipe lies close among the withered 

 sedge, with whose streaks of brown and yellow her 

 pencilled plumage harmonizes well ; the moorhen 

 shows now and then her red helmet as she steals softly 

 through the thickets. The magpie comes home to 

 roost in the coppice. The crow keeps watch over the 

 country from his favourite elm. There is still the 

 robin's cheery strain ; and the song-thrush hails the 

 wintry dawn with a burst of music that has all his 

 heart in it ; but in the dark days of winter the birds 

 make little sign. 



There is no flush of purple on these banks of ling, 

 among whose tangled roots lie deep the lizard and the 



