A MIDSUMMER IDYL 



moment of letting go and attempting actual flight. 

 Several of them have already done it, and I see 

 them resting on the dead limbs of a plum-tree 

 across the road. But more are to follov/, and pa- 

 rental anxiety is still rife. I shall be sorry when the 

 spacious hayloft becomes silent. That affectionate 

 *'Wit, wit" and that contented and caressing 

 squeaking and chattering give me a sense of winged 

 companionship. The old barn is the abode of 

 friendly and delicate spirits, and the sight of them 

 and the sound of them surely bring a suggestion of 

 poetry and romance to these familiar scenes. 



Is not the swallow one of the oldest and dearest 

 of birds? Known to the poets and sages and 

 prophets of all peoples! So infantile, so helpless 

 and awkward upon the earth, so graceful and 

 masterful on the wing, the child and darling of the 

 summer air, reaping its invisible harvest in the 

 fields of space as if it dined on the sunbeams, touch- 

 ing no earthly food, drinking and bathing and 

 mating on the wing, swiftly, tirelessly coursing the 

 long day through, a thought on wings, a lyric in 

 the shape of a bird! Only in the free fields of the 

 summer air could it have got that steel-blue of the 

 wings and that warm tan of the breast. Of 

 course I refer to the barn swallow. The cliff 

 swallow seems less a child of the sky and sun, 

 probably because its sheen and glow are less, and 

 its shape and motions less arrowy. More varied m 



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