SONGS TO THE SUN 79 



Doves ot the fir- wood walling high our red roof, 

 Through the long noon coo, crooning through the 



The crooning from the blackthorn thicket is 

 evidently a chorus. It keeps on incessantly at 

 great volume yet rises and falls as voices are 

 evidently added to or taken from it. Under the 

 blossomed boughs, in the little sheep-track of a 

 path that threads the thicket, not only the air 

 but the very earth seems to vibrate with the 

 exultant yet low- toned croon. I reach the edge 

 of a pond, the surface of which seems to be 

 covered with white bubbles blown here and there. 

 Whiter than bubbles, they are like goose down 

 floating on the water, and they swell into new 

 whiteness and subside into comparative grey as 

 the song comes and goes. 



We have to walk with great silence in order to 

 see the frogs well, swelling out their white throats 

 and crooning their ecstatic song. At the least 

 alarm, violent ripples take the place of the white 

 bubbles, and the whole company goes down among 

 the sub-aquatic weeds. Then we have to wait 

 quietly, and one by one the heads pop up again, 

 two prominent eye-cases and a third point above 

 water for the nose. Then the throat comes up so 

 white that you would think nothing could be 

 whiter, but while you look it swells three times 

 whiter, invades the chest and the neck to the back 

 of the head, and the musical drum-like throb calls 



