The Four Seasons

by Carl Ewald

More flowers came and new flowers; and their scent was sweeter and their colour brighter, even as the Prince of Summer had said. But it was as though they had all become more serious. They no longer swung so carelessly on their stalks, no longer scattered their scent so lavishly to every wind. But, when a bee or a butterfly came flitting up, all the flowers stretched their necks and shed a redoubled radiance and fragrance and cried their honey aloud, so that the insects might come along and take their pollen-ware.

Nor did the bees themselves have so good a time as in the green days of Spring. At home, in the hive, their queen was laying eggs by the hundred; and they had to sweat wax and build cells and fetch honey and pollen, till they were nigh dying with exhaustion. And there were so many flowers that the bees did not know where to turn. In the wood, they got drunk on the sweet scent of the linden-blossom and the honeysuckle; beside the brook, they fluttered plump into the red cap of the poppy. Not one of them was man enough to say no to those flower-cups: the thistle and the burdock, the dandelion and the wild chamomile, all kept them hard at work. Did they come to the hedge, the elderberry called them; would they rest in the grass, the bindweed offered them its chalice with fresh dew-drops on the edge and honey at the bottom; did they fly across the lake, the water-lily lay with her white and yellow blossoms and nodded on the silent waters.

And even as with the flowers and the bees, so it was everywhere. Not anywhere were things as they had been.

However many trills the siskin struck for his sweetheart, however fondly he put his head upon one side, however eagerly he pecked at her with his beak, she minded not a jot, but stared silently and seriously before her:

“There’s that nest,” she said, at last.

“Of course, of course,” replied the siskin and looked as though he had never thought of anything else.

“Yes, but it’s urgent!” said she. “We shall have the eggs before the week is out.”

Then they found a place where they felt like building and together they set to work.

But, wherever they hopped after a twig for which they had a use, already other birds were hopping on the same errand and, wherever they flew after a feather in the air, they had to hurry, lest another should snatch it first. If he got hold of a lovely long horsehair, there would never fail to be some one pulling at the other end; and, if she flew out for some nice moss which she had noticed the day before, she could be sure that her fair neighbour had been to fetch it that morning. For every young couple in the wood was out after furniture and fittings.

At last, the two siskins got their house built; and the other birds did the same. There was not in the wood a bush so poor but it carried a nest in its bosom. In every nest lay eggs; and on the eggs sat a smart little bird-wife looking round watchfully with her black eyes and boring herself most wretchedly. Every moment, her husband would come home with a fly or a worm or some other good nourishing food, as he had promised and as his duty bade him. When evening came, all the bird-husbands sat faithfully on the edge of the nest and sang, each with his little beak, so touchingly and prettily that their wives thought it delightful to be alive.