BIRDS IN A VILLAGE 35 



where succulent morsels had been picked up on 

 previous visits. Thrushes, blackbirds, sparrows, 

 reed -buntings, chaffinches, tits, wrens, with many 

 other species, succeeded each other all day long ; 

 for now they mostly had young to provide for, and 

 it was their busiest time. 



The unsullied beauty and solitariness of this spot 

 made me wish at first that I was a boy once more, 

 to climb and to swim, to revel in the sunshine and 

 flowers, to be nearer in spirit to the birds and dragon- 

 flies and water-rats ; then, that I could build a 

 cabin and live there all the summer long, forgetful 

 of the world and its affairs, with no human creature 

 to keep me company, and no book to read, or with 

 only one slim volume, some Spanish poet, let me 

 say Melendez for preference only a small selection 

 from his too voluminous writings ; for he, albeit 

 an eighteenth-century singer, was perhaps the last 

 of that long illustrious line of poets who sang as 

 no others have sung of the pure delightfulness of a 

 life with nature. Something of this charm is un- 

 doubtedly due to the beauty of the language they 

 wrote in and to the free airy grace of assonants* 

 What a hard artificial sound the rhyme too often 

 has, the clink that falls at regular intervals as of a 

 stone-breaker's hammer ! In the freer kinds of 

 Spanish poetry there are numberless verses that 

 make the smoothest lines and lyrics of our sweetest 



