THE LONELIER HOURS 25 



the dancers deliberately perform before her eyes, or whether 

 the dance is simply an outlet for exultation in her company. 

 As the last glow fades the dancers rapidly desist, and the 

 whole display is over before midnight. 



Songs of the summer nights mark audibly the change 

 that comes over the season between the springlike opening 

 of June and the autumnal ripeness and gravity that tinge 

 the dewy August dawns. For the first ten days of June 

 the nightingales are still in song before midnight, though 

 they are rapidly declining ; song-thrushes sing late into the 

 white twilight hour, and the cries of plovers and water-fowl 

 show how lightly they are dipped in sleep. The deep and 

 passionate song of the nightingale seems in accord with 

 the scents of evening, and the warmth of the early night. 

 Nightingales stop singing, as a rule, when the air begins 

 to grow chilly towards one o'clock ; they are not among 

 the earliest singers of the dawn, in the keener air of the 

 new day. After the nightingales have fallen silent, and 

 before the first larks rise, comes the wind of dawn that 

 runs round the world in advance of the sun, and divides 

 the old day from the new one. The change is palpable ; 

 the cooler air has lost the scents and languors of the out- 

 worn summer day, and has the renewed freshness of morning. 

 About two o'clock, before it is light enough to see the larks 

 rise in the sky, they can be heard in a great singing com- 

 pany, soaring into the grey morning vault. Sometimes the 

 music comes from the ground; they seem often to utter 

 their first hymn to the coming day before it is clear enough 

 to draw them into the sky. Blackbirds sing a few brief 

 strains, and then fall silent again for nearly an hour. When 

 the light is already clear enough to see the dewdrops 

 hanging on the grass blades, then bursts forth a universal 

 to the sun. In a wood or garden where birds abound, 



