DAYS IN MY GARDEN 



where the startled dipper checks his rapid flight and, 

 alighting on some slippery pebble, elegantly bobs at 

 our intrusion. Clothed in his almost black tail-coat 

 and white dress shirt, he always looks a perfect little 

 gentleman ; but alas ! I fear he is not. Then pause 

 awhile and drink the sweetness of great scented fields 

 of beans, whose silvered green would seem to have cap- 

 tured the moonlight sheen and to have absorbed its 

 lustrous rays into their substance. Or listen to those 

 old familiar sounds of summer nights, the whirring 

 burr of nightjar, ebbing, flowing ; the harsh metallic 

 scratch of corncrake, now here, now there quaint 

 ventriloquist is he while yonder whistling lad lets 

 swing the oaken gate, and by its muffled wooden note 

 has startled up a screaming peewit to wing its weird 

 night flight ; we hear the swoop of wing and rush of 

 air, that strange repeating, half-grating noise, as if 

 its wheeling wings had rusty joints ; a hundred dear 

 familiar sounds, the music of the night. 



Nay, what is Nature's 

 Self, but an endless 

 Strife towards music, 

 Euphony, rhyme ? 



9 



