The Return of Song 22T 



while the smoke of the weed-fires ascends through 

 the autumn mists, the buds and catkins of the 

 coming summer are already moulded upon the tree. 

 It is the truth of nature's resurgence which is 

 proclaimed in the keen voices of the robin and the 

 thrush. The emulous instincts of spring already 

 burn fitfully within them, and they will sing on 

 of what their spirit foreshadows until it is fully 

 come. But there is also an inevitable sense of 

 parting in autumn ; a memory dwells before us, 

 in the golden stubble-fields beneath the sky, of 

 the changeful succession of an English summer 

 outworn, and all the stamp of the one individual 

 year. This sense of retrospection and fulfilment, 

 present in all the quiet autumn landscape, seems 

 to find audible expression from nature in the 

 linnets' murmuring song. It is purely an echo of 

 what is past, and will fade into winter silence 

 before the pack breaks up for spring, and each 

 singer is again a warrior and lover. 



