34 
BIBD8 IN A VILLAGE. 
not the same ; something was missing from those 
last sweet languishing notes. Perhaps in the 
interval there had been some distuning accident 
in his little wild life, or else his midsummer's music 
had reached its highest point and was now in its 
declension. And perhaps the fault was in me. 
The virtue that draws and holds us does not hold 
us long ; it departs from all things, and we wonder 
why. The loss is in ourselves, although we do not 
know it. Nature, the chosen mistress of our heart, 
does not change towards us, yet she is now, even 
to-day — 
Less full of purple colour and hid spice, 
and smiles and sparkles in vain to allure us, and 
when she touches us with her warm caressing touch, 
there is, compared with yesterday, only a faint 
response. 
Coming back from the waterside through the 
wood, after the hottest hours of the day were over, 
the crooning of the stock doves would be heard 
again on every side — that summer beech-wood 
lullaby that seemed never to end. The other bird 
voices were of the willow wren, the wood- wren, the 
coal- tit, and the somewhat tiresome chiff-chaff; 
from the distance would come the prolonged rich 
strain of the blackbird, and occasionally the lyric 
