Act Fourth
The Night of the Nightingale
In the Forest. Evening. Huge trees with thick gnarled roots. At the base of one of the trees, Time or a lightning stroke has hollowed a sort of chamber. Rising slopes carpeted with heather. Rabbit holes. Mosses. Toadstools. Stretched between two ferns, a great cobweb, spangled with water-drops. At the rise of the curtain, Rabbits are discovered on every side among the underbrush, peacefully inhaling the evening air. A time of serene silence and coolness.
Scene First
A Rabbit in front of his burrow, Choir of Unseen Birds.
A Rabbit
It is the hour when with sweet and solemn voices the two warblers, Black-cap of the Gardens, and Red-wing of the Woods, intone the evening prayer.
A Voice
[Among the branches.] O God of Birds!
Another Voice
O God of Birds! or, rather, for the Hawk
Has surely not the same God as the Wren,
O God of Little Birds!
A Thousand Voices
[Among the leaves.] O God of Little Birds!
First Voice
Who breathed into our wings to make us light,
And painted them with colours of His sky,
All thanks for this fair day, for meat and drink—
Sweet sky-born water caught in cups of stone,
Sweet hedgerow berries washed of dust with dew,
And thanks for these good little eyes of ours
That spy the unseen enemies of man,
And thanks for the good tools by Thee bestowed
To aid our work of little gardeners,
Trowels and pruning-hooks of living horn.
The Second Voice
To-morrow we will fight borer and blight,
Forgive Thy birds to-night their trespasses,
The stripping of a currant-bush or two!