A WOOD WREN AT WELLS 105 



summer, of the far-up cloud of green translucent 

 leaves, with open spaces full of green shifting 

 sunlight and shadow. Though resonant and 

 far-reaching it does not strike you as loud, but 

 rather as like the diifused sound of the wind 

 in the foliage concentrated and made clear — 

 a voice that has hght and shade, rising and 

 passing like the wind, changing as it flows, and 

 quivering like a wind-fluttered leaf It is on 

 account of this harmony that it is not trivial, 

 and that the ear does not grow tired of hearing 

 it : sooner would it tire of the nightingale- 

 its purest and most brilliant tones and most 

 perfect artistry. 



The continuous singing of a skylark at a 

 vast height above the green, biUowy, sun- and 

 shadow -swept earth is an etheriahsed sound 

 that fills the blue space — fills it and falls, and 

 is part of that visible nature above us, as if the 

 blue sky, the floating clouds, the wind and 

 sunshine, had something for the hearing as 

 weU as for the sight. And as the lark in its 

 soaring song is of the sky, the wood wren is of 

 the wood. 



