252 THE BOOK OF BIRDS 



break, but that is very unusual. He and the sun awake 

 together. 



During the burning heat of a summer's noontide you 

 will not hear him, but as the hours pass on he will be up 

 and singing again. I have read that he seldom sings late 

 in the day. This surely is an error. Many of us must 

 have watched him " going up for the last time," and seen 

 him descend and again go up — while the sun's bright rim 

 was sinking below the horizon. 



It was to the evening song of one of these birds, heard 

 near Leghorn, in Italy, by the poet Shelley, that we owe 

 one of the most musical poems in the English language. 

 It is called " An Ode to a Skylark," and I daresay some of 

 you know it already. 



A mounting Lark is a fine-weather sign. For he knows 

 well that to soar, or even to^ keep hovering high in air, 

 when rain may make his wings heavy, would be to under- 

 take a very tiring effort. But after rain, — as soon as the 

 shower or the storm has really ceased, — who so eager as the 

 Skylark to get upon the wing once more ? 



When chased by a falcon, whose keen eye and bold 

 flight make it so hard to outwit, a Skylark, if he is already 

 high in air, will often try to out-soar his enemy. Fear 

 then lends special strength to his wings, and he will rise a 

 thousand feet and more ^ above the earth. Then, bearing 

 away to left or right, he may succeed in giving the falcon 

 the slip. 



But if they manoeuvre, like two ships of war, and 

 the Lark finds himself undermost, he has the power of 

 closing his wings and " dropping like a stone," even from a 

 height of eight hundred feet, and slipping into some bush 

 or thicket where, for the time being, he is safe. 



^ Mr. Charles Dixon says " two thousand feet and more into the sky." 



