r. 



HOURS OF SPRING. 



all the grass. Under the wind it seemed to dry and 

 become grey, and the starlings running to and fro on the 

 h surface that did not sink now stood high above it and 

 ij were larger. The dust that drifted along blessed it and 

 ■ it grew. Day by day a change ; always a note to make. 

 I* The moss drying on the tree trunks, dog's-mercury 

 [' stirring under the ash-poles, bird's-claw buds of beech 

 ' lengthening ; books upon books to be filled with these 

 i things. I cannot think how they manage without me. 

 i To-day through the window-pane I see a lark high 

 up against the grey cloud, and hear his song. I cannot 

 \\;ilk about and arrange with the buds and gorse-bloom ; 

 how does he know it is the time for him to sing ? 

 Without my book and pencil and observing eye, how 

 docs he understand that the hour has come ? To sing 

 high in the air, to chase his mate over the low stone 

 wall of the ploughed field, to battle with his high-crested 

 ri\al, to balance himself on his trembling wings out- 

 spread a few yards above the earth, and utter that sweet 

 little loving kiss, as it were, of song — oh, happy, happy 

 days ! So beautiful to watch as if he were my own, and 

 I felt it all ! It is years since I went out amongst them 

 in the old fields, and saw them in the green corn ; they 

 must be dead, dear little things, by now. Without me 

 to tell him, how does this lark to-day that I hear through 

 the window know it is his hour ? 



The green hawthorn buds prophesy on the hedge ; 

 the reed pushes up in the moist earth like a spear thrust 

 through a shield ; the eggs of the starling are laid in the 

 knot-hole of the pollard elm — common eggs, but within 

 each a speck that is not to be found in the cut diamond 

 Df two hundred carats — the dot of protoplasm, the atom 

 :)f life. There was one row of pollards where they 

 always began laying first. With a big stick in his beak, 



B 2 



