76 Nightingales in Song-time 



azure of the bluebells. The song of the nightingale 

 is not more deeply associated with any spot in 

 English scenery than with the fringe of a beech wood 

 in May, where the young leaves quiver on low-hung 

 branches above the scented bluebell beds. It is 

 such a chequered fringe or glade of the wood that 

 Keats describes, with true observation, as the 

 nightingale's typical haunt. The depths of a beech- 

 wood are dark, columnar, and void of song ; it is on 

 their outskirts, where the young and almost trans- 

 parent foliage half subdues the sunlight to its own 

 tender hue, that we come year by year, " in some 

 melodious plot of beechen green," on the singing 

 nightingale. When moonlight falls in such a spot, 

 the foliage of many of the paler and more sheltered 

 beech boughs shines as white beneath its rays as 

 the blossom of the neighbouring cherry trees. The 

 wild apple blooms in May in many of the nightin- 

 gale's shadier haunts ; on the sunnier flank of the 

 thicket the reddish gold of the gorse is reinforced, 

 as the month advances, by the clearer yellow of 

 the broom. White cow-parsley rises at the hay- 

 field's side to meet the hawthorn boughs ; and only 

 when their own foaming blossom completes the 

 framing of the meadows, and lies banked upon the 

 crown of the brake, do the nightingales' voices one 

 by one cease, when the turn of the year's tide is 

 almost come. 



Disappointment often attends a first acquaintance 

 with any object of great celebrity ; and this perhaps 

 explains the tempered admiration which is occasion- 

 ally expressed on a first hearing of the nightingale's 



