Come, each tuneful darling!
Come from far and come from near,
Lapwing, stork and starling!
Then the air hummed with the beat of a thousand wings and the army of birds of passage fell like a host upon the valley. Each night the air was vocal with the passing of the birds; and in the morning there was no end to the twittering.
There sat the starling and whistled in his black dress-coat, with all the orders on his breast. The swallow swept through the air; siskin and linnet, nightingale and blackcap hopped about in the copsewood. The reed-warbler struck his trills in the rushes along the river-banks so touchingly that one could weep to hear it, the thrush took the deep notes and the goldfinch the high ones, the cuckoo ventured upon his first call and the lapwing sat on his mound and swaggered. But the stork walked in the meadow and never vouchsafed a smile.
Meanwhile, the whole wood had come out, but the leaves were still small, so that the sun was able to peep down at the anemones. Lilies of the valley distilled their fragrance for dainty nostrils and woodruffs theirs for noses of the humbler sort. The green flowers of the beech dangled from the new thin twigs; cherry and blackthorn were white from top to toe; valerian and star of Bethlehem and lousewort did their best. The shepherd’s pouch, that blossomed the whole year round, was annoyed that no one took any notice of it, but the orchis stood and looked mysterious and uncanny, because it had such strange tubers in the ground.
Far in the beech-thicket, where it was greenest and prettiest, sat a lovesick siskin and courted his sweetheart, who hopped on a twig beside him and looked as if she simply could not understand what he was driving at.
He sang:
If only, love, thou wilt be mine,
If now my singing heard is,