A MADRIGAL OF THE NIGHT 47 
accustomed to our dark. What a sweet com- 
fort that voice of song should have been to 
little fearful nestlings! Cheer would have caressed 
them into quiet after that. Like a mother sooth- 
ing her little bird at night when in the dark, 
the little lad or lassie would wail out in sudden 
fear to be caressed into an unspeakable calm 
and quiet by a mother lullaby. “Hush, my 
dear. Lie still and slumber. Holy angels guard 
thy bed”; and for such a soothing song a baby 
might be glad enough to stumble into painful 
wakefulness. I, a man grown and coming toward 
life’s yellow leaf, would have a hundred thousand 
heartaches if I might just be soothed by such 
a swift and dear compassion as my mother’s 
lullaby. The night song of the lark, was a mother 
lullaby? Maybe. We cannot tell. 
It may have been a bird in love and thought 
itself singing to its lady in the morning when 
the day was young. Maybe the raindrops on 
its nest and on its yellow breast, it took for 
dew and so sang out one swift and tuneful word 
—“Morning.” 
But whatever caused the song, I, a man of 
the longing heart, heard it and stored it away 
in the shadow spaces of my heart, where dwell 
the innumerable company of memories sweet as 
dawn and lovely as blooming flax swayed in the 
noon-time wind. 
