2i6 BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE 



and a good store of pins* Shall I ever again hear thy 

 breezy music, and see thee among the green leaves, 

 beautiful with steel-blue and creamy-white body, 

 and dim purple over and vivid red underwings $* 



The bird of the pasture-land is singing still, 

 perhaps, but all at once I have ceased to hear him, 

 for something has come to lift me above his low 

 grassy level, something faint and at first only the 

 suspicion of a sound ; then a silvery lisping, far off 

 and aerial, touching the sense as lightly as the wind- 

 borne down of dandelion* 



If any place for any soul there be 

 Disrobed and disentrammelled, 



doubtless it is from such a place and such a soul 

 that this sublimated music falls. The singer, one 

 can imagine, has never known or has forgotten 

 earth ; and if it is visible to him, how small it must 

 seem from that altitude, " spinning like a fretful 

 midge " beneath him in the vast void ! 



It is the lark singing in the blue infinite heaven* 

 at this distance with something ethereal and heavenly 

 in his voice ; but now the wide circling wings that 

 brought him for a few moments within hearing, have 

 borne him beyond it again ; and missing it, the 

 sunshine looks less brilliant than before, and all 

 other bird-voices seem by comparison dull and of 

 the earth* 



