196 BIRDS OF THE COUNTRYSIDE 



trees, with heads and limbs sliced off and numbers 

 rotting into pulp where they lay : 



Sure thou didst flourish once ! and many springs, 

 Many bright mornings, much dew and many showers, 

 Passed o'er thy head ; many light hearts and wings, 

 Which now are dead, lodged in thy living bowers. 

 But thou beneath the sad and heavy line 

 Of death, dost waste, all senseless, cold and dark ; 

 Where not so much as dreams of light may shine, 

 Nor any thought of greenness, leaf or bark. 



Nothing grew on the ground, nothing moved except 

 the surfeited boring beetles, and I made haste to escape 

 and trespass into the estate, where it was almost as 

 bad, for I found no life in it, except one squirrel and 

 four cole-tits. Woods nowadays are haunted not by 

 ghosts, but silence, vacancy, desolation, which might 

 well take terrifying material forms. They are what 

 the whole country will be like one day, unless some- 

 thing drastic happens to men's minds. It was good,, 

 then, to hear a murmur from a willow-wren by the 

 station, tenuous, fragmentary, scarce audible, but still 

 warm with old joys and exorcizing the evil spell. 



