CHAPTER XXXVIII 

 THE SPINX 



I REMEMBER one April walking through the tall willow 

 saplings of a waterside coppice, sprayed with tender green 

 shoots, when I saw two birds, brilliant in red, mauve, 

 black, and white, whirr with swift flight through the moss- 

 green stalks in the soft light, and alight on an ivied oak-tree, 

 whence they poured forth their short sweet songs, ending 

 abruptly as they flew off after the hen-bird in soberer dress ; 

 for the gay- coloured chaffinches were courting, as I knew by 

 the short sweet song and the spinx, spinx, of the hen-bird 

 as she alighted on a branch and watched the amorous lovers 

 contending through the coppice for her person. 



I sank into a bed of moss, blue with hyacinths and bright 

 with primroses, and, looking up the tall smooth green stalks, 

 watched their love-flighting till the brightening sun had 

 opened the water-lilies on the mere. Then I left the cool 

 brake and sought the mere, and as I pushed from the low 

 shore, I saw the hen-bird and one cock-bird flying off together 

 to a large weeping willow that overhung the island in the lake, 

 for year after year they have built in a heavy willow branch or 

 in a shapely alder, placing their perfect little nest of lichen- 

 embroidered moss, lined with the gay feathers of fowls, over 

 the still waters, now blue, now silver, now rosy when the sun 

 sinks over the reed tassels. And yet they are not happy, 

 for mice dearly love their eggs, and woe to the spinx that 

 builds in a hedgerow. 



I remember another spring when I saw these gay birds 

 tearing up my young radishes that flourished under the 



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