IN AN OLD GARDEN 215 



like lovers, and fluttered up vertically on their short 

 wings, trying to scream like eagles, only to return 

 to the trees once more and sit there chattering 

 pleasant nothings ; at intervals throwing out those 

 soft, round, modulated whistled notes, just as an 

 idle cigarette-smoker blows rings of blue smoke 

 from his lips ; and now they have flown away to the 

 fields so that I can listen to the others* 



A thrush is making music on a tall tree beyond 

 the garden hedge, and I am more grateful for the 

 distance that divides us than for the song; for, 

 just now, he does not sing so well as sometimes of 

 an evening, when he is most fluent, and a listener, 

 deceived by his sweetness and melody, writes to 

 the papers to say that he has heard the nightingale* 

 Just now his song is scrappy, composed of phrases 

 that follow no order and do not fit or harmonize, 

 and is like a poor imitation of an inferior mocking 

 bird's song. 



Between the scraps of loud thrush-music I listen 

 to catch the thin, somewhat reedy sound of a yellow- 

 hammer singing in the middle of the adjoining 

 grassy field. It comes well from the open expanse 

 of purpling grass, and reminds me of a favourite 

 grasshopper in a distant sunny land* O happy grass- 

 hopper I singing all day in the trees and tall herbage, 

 in a country where every village urchin is not sent 

 afield to " study natural history " with green net 



