HOURS OF SPRING. 



all the grass. Under the wind it seemed to dry and 

 become grey, and the starlings running to and fro on the 

 surface that did not sink now stood high above it and 

 were larger. The dust that drifted along blessed it and 

 it grew. Day by day a change ; always a note to make. 

 The moss drying on the tree trunks, dog's-mercury 

 stirring under the ash-poles, bird's-claw buds of beech 

 lengthening ; books upon books to be filled with these 

 things. I cannot think how they manage without me. 



To-day through the window-pane I see a lark high 

 up against the grey cloud, and hear his song. I cannot 

 walk about and arrange with the buds and gorse-bloom ; 

 how does he know it is the time for him to sing ? 

 Without my book and pencil and observing eye, how 

 does he understand that the hour has come ? To sing 

 high in the air, to chase his mate over the low stone 

 wall of the ploughed field, to battle with his high-crested 

 rival, to balance himself on his trembling wings out- 

 spread a few yards above the earth, and utter that sweet 

 little loving kiss, as it were, of song — oh, happy, happy 

 days ! So beautiful to watch as if he were my own, and 

 I felt it all ! It is years since I went out amongst them 

 in the old fields, and saw them in the green corn ; they 

 must be dead, dear little things, by now. Without me 

 to tell him, how does this lark to-day that I hear through 

 the window know it is his hour ? 



The green hawthorn buds prophesy on the hedge ; 

 the reed pushes up in the moist earth like a spear thrust 

 through a shield ; the eggs of the starling are laid in the 

 knot-hole of the pollard elm — common eggs, but within 

 each a speck that is not to be found in the cut diamond 

 of two hundred carats — the dot of protoplasm, the atom 

 of life. There was one row of pollards where they 

 always befcan laying first. With a big stick in his beak 



B 2 



