Timeless Night 117 



reel that it is easy to mistake for a moment some 

 nocturnal fisherman for the bird. The reeling of 

 the nightjar has a hollower note ; it is more like 

 the sound of one of the larger wooden reels when 

 it has been dipped by chance in the stream. It 

 has also a catch and change of tone like the murmur 

 of a far-off threshing-machine in autumn, or an 

 airship prowling beneath the stars. This murmur- 

 ing burden is the only song in the woods ; but 

 among the meadowsweet by the stream-side the 

 sedge-warbler still babbles musically on, seeming 

 to grow more wakeful in the darkness as the nights 

 grow warmer. As we listen where the cool air 

 from the stream wanders up through the warmth 

 given out by the hillside, the bird echoes notes of 

 the day, and voices of the early summer. It mimics 

 the call of the chaffinches that nested in the stream- 

 side alders, and the sharp chirp of the sparrows 

 that gather and bicker by daylight among the 

 crannied willows. 



Calm and filled with summer as are these nights, 

 the voices of the birds in the stillness bring a sense 

 of the fleeting of time. Though the light never 

 fades out of the north, the stir of noonday seems 

 already far away, as the cries of the quarrelling 

 sparrows are given back in the songs of night. Our 

 sense of time largely depends on the constant 

 variety and contrast of normal experience ; and 

 here, in the dark woods filled with one note, its 

 ordinary limits become vague. As the long mur- 

 mur of the nightjar changes pitch at last and falls 

 to a deeper tone, it seems to mark a new epoch of 



