26o BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE 



strange intentness through the slight screen of 

 foliage into the vacant space beyond. What to 

 see ? The poet has omitted to tell us to what the 

 maiden's fancy lightly turns in spring. Doubt- 

 less it turns to thoughts of something real. Life 

 is real; so is passion — the quickening of the 

 blood, the wild pulsation. But the pleasures and 

 pains of the printed book are not real, and are to 

 reality like Japanese flowers made of coloured 

 bits of tissue paper to the living fragrant flowers 

 that bloom to-day and perish to-morrow; they 

 are a simulacrum, a mockery, and present to us a 

 pale phantasmagoric world, peopled with blood- 

 less men and women that chatter meaningless 

 things and laugh without joy. The feeling of 

 unreality affects us all at times, but in very differ- 

 ent degrees. And perhaps I was too long a doer, 

 herding too muqh with narrow foreheads, drink- 

 ing too deeply of the sweet and bitter cup, to 

 experience that pure unfailing delight in literature 

 which some have. Its charm, I fancy, is greatest 

 to those in whom the natural man, deprived in 

 early life of his proper aliment, grows sickly and 

 pale, and perishes at last of inanition. There is 

 ample room then for the latter higher growth — 



