The the lanes of Devon, in lonely nocturnes in the 



Awakener shadowy groves of the New Forest, he has 

 Woods no thought of more vast, more secret and 

 impenetrable woods through which move 

 mountain-airs from Schiehallion, chanting 

 winds from the brows of the Grampians : he 

 has no ancestral memory of the countless 

 battalions of the red pine which throng the 

 wilds of Argyll or look on the grey shoreless 

 seas of the west, these green pillars which 

 once covered the barren braes of Balquhidder, 

 the desolate hill-lands of the Gregara, and, 

 when the world was young, were wet with the 

 spray of the unquiet wastes wherein are set 

 the treeless Hebrides. 



No, in the north at least, we cannot call 

 the nightingale the Forest -Awakener. In 

 truth, nowhere in our land. For he comes 

 late when he comes at all. The great 

 awakening has already happened. Already 

 in the south the song-thrush, the dandelion, the 

 blackthorn -snow are old tales: far in Ultima 

 Thule to the north-west the gillebride has 

 whistled the tidings to Gaelic ears, far in 

 Ultima Thule to the north-east the Shetlander 

 has rejoiced in that blithest thicket-signal of 

 spring, the tossed lilt of the wren. 



It is of the green woodpecker I speak. 

 We do not know him well, most of us : but 

 118 



