288 WOODLANDERS AND FIELD FOLK 



a setting! This, however, is the spring-time of love, 

 and soon six little mouths have to be fed incessantly 

 for sixteen hours a day, and even this is continued 

 over two or three weeks. At the end of that time 

 six balls of fluffy blue feathers pass down the hedge- 

 row and out into the wide world of birddom. 



Wood-flowers are all about me. These are stunted 

 and their colours subdued; the sun only quivers 

 through the beechen boughs in frescoes. The slender 

 pines better let down the lines of light. Beneath 

 them the flowers respond ; they seek to kiss the light 

 and shoot upward. Where I lie the flowers are of 

 spring; those under the pines are of summer. The 

 colours of these are bleached; those are intensified. 

 Here are hyacinths, anemones and wood-sorrel; 

 there foxgloves, woodbine, bellflowers. As summer 

 advances she deepens her train. Follow her, and she 

 goes from green to gold, from gold to russet. Only 

 the birds that have business seem to be in the wood. 

 Except the sounds of our wood-bird's "cheep" 

 everything seems afar off. In the deepest recesses 

 of the wood there is little food, but outside yonder 

 myriads of gauze wings disport in the sunlight. 

 Still we are waiting and watching. Presently the 

 green-brown bird drops down, and the flowers which 

 I have been admiring hang over its hidden nest. It 

 is a common species, and I pass on. 



The sombre twilight of dark woods is pleasant 



