From Fox's Earth 



step, as though suffering from rheumatism. With 

 his short step, he minced round the arc of a circle 

 and back, over and over again, in front of the hen. 

 It was a somewhat belated courtship on this early 

 June day. Perhaps he had not found a mate, or 

 she had lost one. Tell it not in Gath. For a 

 second marriage takes the rose out of the 

 romance. 



Man alone, it is said, lifts the relation of the 

 sexes into the region of the ideal, clothes it 

 round with beauty and a ritual. Whereas, to the 

 observant, man seems but a sorry imitator, and 

 not always a sincere one. It is certainly not in 

 human records, nor in man's progenitors, that we 

 look for moods of romance or lessons of chivalry. 

 Why, the birds sought favour by such gentle arts, 

 and so gave a meaning to love, and beauty to 

 mating ; wove the delicate texture of romance 

 when men were savages. If we add their loyalty 

 to their early love, the lifelong fellowship till 

 death do them part, never so much as once 

 repented of nor broken, we know nothing in man 

 loftier nor lovelier ; certainly nothing so old. Me- 

 thinks, sometimes, that the song of birds, of 

 many seasons' mating, shapes itself into the lay 

 of "John Anderson my Jo." 



In a crumbling part of the fence, where the 

 stones did not quite meet, a blackbird had built. 

 The hole was not deep ; but it chanced that from 

 the same gap a bush grew, whose exposed roots 



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