The Tribe blossom to where the sunlight moves like a 

 of the fawn of gold in a windless land, where the 

 songs of birds turn to flowers, and where 

 flowers change in the twilights of dawn into 

 singing birds. Not thus does Spring come to 

 us in the north. The black-headed gull scream- 

 ing on the east wind, restless before his long 

 flight to the wilderness and the grassy homes 

 of the mating season : the hoodie-crow, weary 

 of the south, heard on grey mornings when 

 sleet whips the uplands : the troubled field- 

 fares, eager for lands oversea : the curlews 

 crying along the Anglian fens and lamenting 

 over Solway Moss : the mallard calling to his 

 mate in the chill waters : the shadow of 

 harrier and peregrine from Surrey upland to 

 the long braes of Lammermuir — these, rather, 

 are the signals of our bleak northern Spring. 

 What though the song-thrush and the skylark 

 have long sung, though the wheatear and 

 chiff-chaff have been late in coming, though 

 the first swallows have not had the word 

 passed on by the woodpecker, and somewhere 

 in the glens of Greece and Sicily the cuckoo 

 lingers ? How often the first have called 

 Spring to us, and, while we have listened, the 

 wind has passed from the south to the north 

 and the rains have become sleet or snow : how 

 often the missel-thrush has rung-in the tides 



ioo 



