The Promise of May. 19 



mouth until she can match it to her satisfaction ? 

 Who can tell ? 



April has brought the shrike back to the old corner 

 of the meadow, where last year she decorated the 

 thorns about her nest, with the bodies of unhappy 

 cockchafers and bumble-bees ; has brought the willow- 

 wren, and the whitethroat, and many another exile 

 home from the warm south. 



May will bring the swift across the burning sands of 

 the Soudan, where bleach, alas ! the bones of many a 

 bold forgotten hero. The old fable of the Bird of 

 Paradise is true of him, for his feet never touch the 

 ground ; and, should any mischance bring him there, 

 those very pinions, that carry him through the air at a 

 pace that leaves him no rival in the world of birds, 

 from their length and their curvature, prevent his 

 rising on the wing. 



Late in the month of May, the fly-catcher, among 

 the very last of the wayfarers, will find her way back 

 to the arms of the ancestral vine that wanders along 

 the sunny wall ; will perch once more on the low bough 

 of the same moss-covered apple-tree in the sunny 

 orchard ; will turn her bright eye up, down, round on 

 all sides, and then flash off to snap up a fly that has 

 ventured too near her station, as coolly as if she had 

 never crossed the sea at all, or basked in the sunshine 

 of a tropical sky. 



In May the magnificent anthem of the nightingale 

 fills with melody the Surrey lanes. . 



