144 MIDSUMMER NIGHT 

 come, urged by instinct to seek the means 

 of life, and it had found only death. 

 Dreamily the owl fanned the night with 

 his broad wings and then floated away 

 to his nest in the loft of the cottage near 

 the church. Saddened by the consciousness 

 of life's tragedy every form of life depend- 

 ing for existence on the death of another 

 form I walked towards the village, while 

 a landrail began his jarring crake-crake in 

 the corn, and little moths went down to 

 drink the honey of the night -opening 

 flowers, living their short life while the 

 moon, soon to die, was in its fullest beauty. 

 Antares was a dull red ember in the south: 

 the star of summer that Richard Jefferies 

 loved. My thought was with him he 

 was near me, though the body had long 

 been lying in Broadwater. Had he spoken to 

 me in this mystic June night, I wondered; 

 and then a blackcap warbler sang in a thorn 

 bush; my thought was as old as its song, 

 and I doubted no longer. 



