To Mountain Tarn 



has not sent a little pebble at the bush that he 

 might begin again ? 



In Scotland, if we boast not the finest singer, 

 we have the most charming setting. What en- 

 vironment may be to a song, and how the 

 sweetest outpourings may suffer in a poor and 

 unhelpful scene, the prince of observers tells us : 



Soft stillness, and the night 



Become the touches of sweet harmony. 



The nightingale if he should sing by day 

 When every goose is cackling, would be thought 

 No better a musician than the wren. 



The magic light of the lanes, the deeper 

 shadows under the hedges, the mystery, the still- 

 ness, disturbed only by the passing moth, are 

 all in the song. It is a poor imagination that 

 hears but the sound and finds no space for the 

 rest. 



If it be so in the sweet south, how much may 

 the magic of our northern night drawn out and 

 mystic, and still, beyond the dream of those of 

 other lands add to the northern night song ? 

 Almost enough to make a sedge-warbler's chatter 

 by a Sutherland stream arresting as a nightin- 

 gale's lay in a Surrey lane. 



A delicate lad is fishing. The nervous hand 

 drops the bait just where the burn surges out of 

 the curve. I watch the line in its swift career 

 in the straight run, and round the eddy, where 



71 



