26 



BIRDS, BEASTS, AND FISHES 



observation; but you answer never a word, the homely - 

 looking little minstrel's song has sealed your lips : you are 

 in the presence of art, of a joyous outburst of love, of a 

 paean of battle, such as one used to listen to day after day 

 and night after night from rooms overlooking the old gar- 

 dens of Downing College, where one used to recall the songs 

 of the singers of Greece, accompanied by the nightingale's 

 songs, which, like flowers, are " always old, yet always new." 

 Later in the season you are in the same wood again listen- 

 ing, for these birds are very rare in the Broadland. And as the 

 song stops another bird begins to croak, and the old broach- 

 river rises slowly, and strolling out with his black dog, as 

 he adjusts his old moleskin cap, he leads you silently to an 

 old tree-stump and points out a nest of young nightingales ; 

 but then you are not discomfited, for you know that pure 

 love-song will last for six joyous weeks in the prime of the 

 year, when all the world is young again, and every lad has 

 his lass, and the world lives poetry, as it did in the golden age 

 of Hellas. 



NIGHTINGALES NEST AND EGGS. 



