Tenants of a Season. 5 



after year safe from all invasion, unless perchance the 

 visit of an unprincipled cuckoo. 



Niches in the ancient walls are tenanted by the robin 

 and the oxeye ; among the sheltering ivy the chaffinch 

 weaves her nest. High up in the great sycamore that 

 spreads its broad arms over the ruin, a crow has built 

 himself a fortress destined ere long to be harried by 

 some angry farmer, and the thief himself, slain perhaps 

 red-handed, hung up as a warning to his fellows. 



Along the wandering banks beyond, overshadowed 

 in summer by a cool canopy of marestail and meadow- 

 sweet, there lingers yet a relic, it may be, of far-off 

 feudal days. For among the tangle of the winter 

 thickets, peering shyly out here and there between the 

 glossy hazel stems, wild snowdrops, wild since Norman 

 times, hang their graceful heads far more lovely, the 

 naturalist fondly thinks, than their statelier sisters of 

 the garden. 



Now the meeting streams widen out into the river. 

 Dark alders and gray willow-trees lean over the water. 

 Broad belts of sedge and rushes line the shore, set 

 here and there with fiery clusters of marsh-marigold. 



Here in winter the snipe get up, with strange cry 

 and devious flight; and the water-rail steals silently 

 away under the bank, or, as she flies to cover, leaves a 

 silvery path with her trailing feet. 



Here, too, in springtime, the shy moor-hen cautiously 

 anchors her broad nest of flags out in mid- stream 

 among brown stems of rustling reeds. Later on she 



