28 
BIRDS IN A VILLAGE. 
few moments, take a look round, then fly to some 
favourite spot where succulent morsels had been 
picked up on previous visits. Thrushes, blackbirds, 
sparrows, reed-buntings, tits, wrens, with many 
other species, succeeded each other all day long; 
for now they mostly had young to provide for, and 
it was their busiest time. 
The unsullied beauty and solitariness of this 
spot made me wish at first that I was a boy once 
more, to climb and to swim, to revel in the sun- 
shine and flowers, to be nearer in spirit to the 
birds and dragon-flies and water-rats ; then, that I 
could build a cabin and live there all the summer 
long, forgetful of the world and its affairs, with no 
human creature to keep me company, and no book 
to read, or with only one slim volume, some 
Spanish poet, let me say Melendez for preference 
— only a small selection from his too voluminous 
writings ; for he, albeit an eighteenth century 
singer, was perhaps the last of that long illustrious 
line of poets who sang as no others have sung of 
the pure delightfulness of a life with nature. Some- 
thing of this charm is undoubtedly due to the beauty 
of the language they wrote in and to the free airy 
grace of assonants. What a hard artificial sound 
the rhyme too often has, the clink that falls at 
regular intervals as of a stone-breaker's hammer I 
In the freer kinds of Spanish poetry there are 
