64 THE BOOK OF THE OPEN AIR 



birds of the home-abiding kinds ; as careless blackbird, but in staccato 

 the third week of April leads in each bursts, with provoking checks between 

 crowded day, the rapidity of change them ; some of its notes, too, especi- 

 seems to outstrip the attentive mind, ally in the case of the least ripe and 

 and the ear has hardly grown accus- perfect singers, may seem almost 

 tomed to the happy twitter of the harsh and untuneful when heard near 

 racing swallows, to the call of the at hand, from the very force and 

 cuckoo in the elms, or the chatter of urgency of their delivery. But when 

 the inconsequent whitethroats in the the song of the nightingale is heard 

 shooting hedge-sides, when the throb year after year, by day and by night, 

 of the nightingale's music first breaks among all the innumerable bird-voices 

 upon the expectant senses in the mid- of early summer, or lonely in the 

 flood of the spring. moonshine or under the stars, there are 

 Like the first impression of many few who do not feel that it does excel 

 things of famous and universal repute, the songs of all our other birds in 

 the first strain of nightingale music passion and richness, in an unequalled 

 falling on expectant ears bred beyond mingling of liquid sweetness and won- 

 the limits of its range will often seem derful force and fire. It is this supreme 

 distinctly disappointing and unfavour- force, this masterful and heart-deep 

 able. We are apt to form expectations passion, in the nightingale's song that 

 greater than any reality can immedi- unquestionably places it above the 

 ately fulfil, and few persons who first three or four other kinds of English 

 hear the nightingale's song, whether bird-music which may equal or even 

 in the midst of the high noonday surpass it in sustained purity or sweet- 

 chorus or alone in the silence and ness of tone. The vehement fulness 

 darkness of night, will at once regard of its utterance is so unparalleled, and 

 its rich but broken music as worthy even startling, as it suddenly bursts 

 of such great and age-old praise of the upon the ear from a brake of green by 

 poets, and all its acclamation and the footpath among all the voices of 

 tribute of worship from men of every May, that there seems an actual 

 time. Often the nightingale will sing, physical necessity for it to pause for 

 not in a free, unbroken torrent of an instant's breathing-space after each 

 music like the lark, or even in such tyrannous burst of song. And yet 

 sweet, rich desultory catches as the there are many times, in the softest 



