HOURS OF SPRING. 3 
all the grass. Under the wind it seemed to dry and 
become grey, and the starlings running to and fro on the 
‘surface that did not sink now stood high above it and> 
were larger. The dust that drifted along blessed it and 
it grew. Day by day a change; always a note to make. 
The moss drying on the tree trunks, dog’s-mercury 
stirring under the ash-poles, bird’s-claw buds of beech 
lengthening ; books upon books to be filled with these | 
things. I cannot think how they manage without me. 
To-day through the window-pane I see a lark high 
up against the grey cloud, and hear his song. I cannot 
walk about and arrange with the buds and gorse-bloom ; 
how does he know it is the time for him to sing? 
Without my book and pencil and observing eye, how 
does he understand that the hour has come? To sing 
high in the air, to chase his mate over the low stone 
wall of the ploughed field, to battle with his high-crested 
rival, to balance himself on his trembling wings out- 
spread a few yards above the earth, and utter that sweet 
little loving kiss, as it were, of song—oh, happy, happy 
days! So beautiful to watch as if he were my own, and 
I felt it all! It is years since I went out amongst them 
in the old fields, and saw them in the green corn; they 
must be dead, dear little things, by now. Without me 
to tell him, how does this lark to-day that I hear through 
the window know it is his hour? 
The green hawthorn buds, prophesy on the hedge ; 
the reed pushes up in the moist earth like a spear thrust 
through a shield ; the eggs of the starling are laid in the 
knot-hole of the ‘aollatd elm—common eggs, but within 
each a speck that is not to be found in the cut diamond 
of two hundred carats—-the dot of protoplasm, the atom 
of life. There was one row of pollards where they 
always began laying first. With a big stick in his beak 
R2 
