Long Will

by Florence Converse

PROLOGUE

am Ymagynatyf,' quod he, 'idel was I nevere.'"

The Vision Concerning Piers Plowman.
B. Passus XII.

I

The Lark and the Cuckoo

HERE were a many singers on the hill-top. They twittered in the gorse; they whistled from the old hawthorn tree, amid the white may; they sprang to heaven, shaking off melody in their flight; and one, russet-clad, lay at his length against the green slope, murmuring English in his throat.

“'T was in a May morning,” he said, “'T was in a May morning,”—and he loitered over the words and drew out the “morwening” very long and sweet. Then, because there was a singing mote of a lark in the misty blue above him, his own song dropped back into his breast, and he waited.

He was young and lank, and his hair was yellow-red. He followed the lark up into the bright heaven with wide, unblinking eyes. The bird fell to earth; somewhere unseen a cuckoo chanted. Three sheep on the brow of the hill moved forward, slowly feeding.