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NATURE NOTES. 
By the broken gate that idly swung 
Near umber tilth ajar, 
Our eyes to faint horizons clung, 
Bloomed as young wheat-sheaths are. 
You deemed it must be sea that hung 
Blent with yon skies afar. 
Lo ! red thorns on the briar fair. 
And buds uncurling green. 
Bird-notes flash lavish everywhere. 
Spill water brimmed, or lean 
Long plainings on the summer-air 
That seem to sleek the sheen. 
A foal lithe frisking round his dam 
In cowslipped meadow plays ; 
Pushing, a weak-limbed nestling lamb 
Beneath his parent sways ; 
With cool slant shade each blade's green flame 
A sister blade allays. 
* * * * 
Shy secret of the bud and leaf. 
Shy secret of the bloom. 
And such as now in Springtime flood 
■Sweet nests in emerald gloom 
Of boscage, where some finch may brood. 
And a stray beam only come. 
Let us hear with him the songs of the birds. Go to the haw- 
thorn bush wherein there hides deep “ A nest of pale eggs tiny 
with a blush and mottle of wine.” .... There is the 
mother chaffinch sheltered — 
Whose gay mate sits nigh. 
And chirps to her — yon linnet dipping by 
Sings as he flies, and perching in the ash 
A runnel long of melody doth flash 
From him and wander through the woodland far. 
Whose notes impetuous ecstatic war 
Which shall be first ; they hustle and they throng 
As all the teeming Spring were in the song ; 
That little elf will utter forth the whole ; 
Well may he quiver, and beyond control, 
The rapture whirl him from the leafy shade 
With shimmering wings adown the sunlit glade 1 
But he is not alone — hark 1 trickling notes 
From the hid blackcap. 
Clear pipes the blackbird, and a thrush’s love 
Flutes softer — hark 1 the lark is in the blue. 
Whose music-sea the sunlight eddies through.” 
One would like to italicise that last line, and many another 
line of this poet’s, but it is better that each reader should 
italicise for himself ! 
Here is the nightingale’s ecstasy. 
I who longed for the whispering cool of the grove. 
Stole to the valley of verdurous gloom. 
Where a nightingale sings evermore to his love. 
As though man knew no sorrow, nor earth e’er a tomb. 
