THE RED-BREAST 169 



that generally you die sutklenly, struck by a fit of apo- 

 plexy. That is another of the privileges of your destiny. 

 As Montaigne says : « The deadest deaths are the best. » 

 On some evening in spring or summer, after too substan- 

 tial a meal, or too long a feast of love, you will receive 

 your death-blow. Dead leaves will cover your small body, 

 just as they formerly covered your nest, and dying, you 

 can still imagine that you are lying in your cradle. 



Our lot is not so happy as yours, oh robin red-breast ! 

 Our life, less uniform than yours, is hdler of deceiving 

 complications. 



A changeful infinite 



It spreads before our eyes like some vast plain 

 Where fairy magic spreads for our delight 

 The varying witchery of its mystic train. 



There may we roam, too, lost in wonderment, 

 To choose among the myriad opening flovers; 

 Amazed with beauty, afar, we miss the scent 

 Of buds already grasped by hands of ours. 



But although our life be interwoven with honeysuckles 

 or briers, although it be entangled with numberless black 

 threads, amongst which glisten just a few golden ones, 

 it must yet finish like thine, oh robin red breast ! not quite 

 so suddenly ])erchance, with more ups and downs, with a 

 more lingering old age.... nevertheless, it must come* lo 

 an end. Like thee, we must sleej:) in the dark earth, and 

 nothing will remain of our indivichiality, of wliich we 



