THE PAGEANT OF SUMMER. C3 



Without the violet all the bluebells and cowslips could 

 not make a spring, and without the blackbird, even 

 the nightingale would be but half welcome. It is not 

 yet noon, these songs have been ceaseless since dawn ; 

 this evening, after the yellowhammer has sung the sun 

 down, when the moon rises and the faint stars appear, 

 still the cuckoo will call, and the grasshopper lark, the 

 landrail's " crake, crake " will echo from the mound, a 

 warbler or a blackcap will utter his notes, and even at 

 the darkest of the summer night the swallows will 

 hardly sleep in their nests. As the morning sky grows 

 blue, an hour before the sun, up will rise the larks 

 singing and audible now, the cuckoo will recommence, 

 and the swallows will start again on their tireless 

 journey. So that the songs of the summer birds are 

 as ceaseless as the sound of the waterfall which plays 

 day and night. 



I cannot leave it ; I must stay under the old tree in 

 the midst of the long grass, the luxury of the leaves, 

 and the song in the very air. I seem as if I could 

 feel all the glowing life the sunshine gives and the 

 south wind calls to being. The endless grass, the end- 

 less leaves, the immense strength of the oak expanding, 

 the unalloyed joy of finch and blackbird ; from all of 

 them I receive a little. Each gives me something of 

 the pure joy they gather for themselves. In the 

 blackbird's melody one note is mine ; in the dance of 

 the leaf shadows the formed maze is for me, though 

 the motion is theirs ; the flowers with a thousand faces 

 have collected the kisses of the morning. Feeling with 

 them, I receive some, at least, of their fulness of life. 

 Never could I have enough ; never stay long enough 



