116 Timeless Night 



has its own place in the harmony of summer life, 

 and shines with its own vital purpose. This sense 

 of separateness and identity is congenial to man's 

 earthly instincts ; and his kinship to the life around 

 him quickens into a wide and mysterious sympathy 

 in the fields on a dusky night. 



Even by early July the sense of deepening 

 summer is heavy on the landscape, though the year 

 does not fall to its full stillness until all the elder- 

 blossoms and wild-roses are gone. Three weeks 

 earlier, a few nightingales still sang on strongly 

 until an hour after midnight ; while once or twice 

 in a night a hidden singer would fling a few strains 

 suddenly from the heart of the thicket as vehemently 

 as in the nights of May, and then sharply close. 

 Now the nightingales sleep ; and though the last 

 thrushes and blackcaps still call and warble up 

 to sunset among the blossoming limes in the garden, 

 they will be silent before the lime-flower fades. A 

 week or two ago the corncrakes still called endlessly 

 after sunset in the meadows, while high above them 

 the snipe circled on into the dusk with the sharp, 

 monotonous cry which they utter persistently on 

 the wing when the young are fledged. By July, in 

 the meadows of the South of England, both cries 

 have usually ceased ; and every night of the grass- 

 hopper warbler's reeling song may be the last. But 

 deep in the woods the nightjar still utters indefatig- 

 ably its own reeling murmur, louder and deeper 

 than the grasshopper warbler's, but with the same 

 drowsy and unwearying burden. The grasshop- 

 per warbler's song is so like the whirring of a metal 



