In the West Country

by Francis A. Knight

". . . . . . the grace,

The golden smile of June,

With bloom and sun in every place,

And all the world in tune."

Butterflies flit idly by—dark-winged peacocks, soft brown tortoise-shells, pale yellow brimstones like flying gleams of sunshine. The apple boughs are fretted all over with fine points of green, the purple mist round the heads of the great elms deepens in the warm air, the old hedge-row wears already the bright garb of spring. The air is full of spring time, of the breath of primroses and violets, full of pleasant sounds of country life, of the wakening of the world, of the happy voices of a hundred birds, whose glad hearts are revelling in the golden weather.

The birds know well this sunny hollow. Here spring comes early, and summer lingers late. While the fields without are white with wintry rime,

". . . here the glancing sunbeams throng,

And tasselled larches droop to hear

A grace of fleeting song."

To-day, on every side, the feathered woodlanders are stirring. From an old Scotch fir that towers out of the hedge-row—its dark shape showing like a shadow through the leafless boughs of the apple-trees—falls the rich music of a blackbird's song, clear and wild and flute-like. He is a noble singer; less great, indeed, than the song-thrush, but yet a master of his art. And there are those who hold that there is more beauty in the depth and richness, in the power and passion, of his few brief bars, than in all the magnificent anthem of his rival. Farther off, low down in a leafless elm by the border of the orchard, is the thrush himself, flooding the whole glade with his wonderful melody. Over and over there sounds the polished lyric of the wren; over and over again the metallic clink of a coaltit rings out above the plaintive carol of the robin, the sober ditty of the hedge-sparrow. Over all the fields the larks are singing. In the hedges that skirt the orchard sounds the sweet cadence of the chaffinch, the wild warble of the missel-thrush, at times the ringing call of some light-hearted oxeye. From farther up the hollow, from his sanctuary in the old, neglected wilderness of unpruned, lichen-coated trees, floats down the soft laugh of a woodpecker, a mellow sound, a note of peace and solitude, and sylvan greenness. Is it only fancy that here, among these hills, in this sweet country air, among these untarnished immemorial elms, there is more melody in the skylark's song, that there is a finer tone in the cool, clear singing of the robin, that there is a touch of music in the chatter of the very sparrows? But hark, a fainter note floats lightly down from the tree-tops; a note not strong or musical, but heard through all the blended harmonies of a score of singers. It is the call of the chiff-chaff, the first returning wanderer from the warm south, fresh from the orange groves of Sorrento, or the sunny slopes of the Sabine hills. When his small figure shows presently against the dark foliage of a Scotch fir, there is that about him which seems to suggest that he is well content with his home-coming, even though woods are bare and skies are cheerless. He flutters up and down among the branches, never still for a moment. Even when he pauses,—looking like a point of light against the sombre leaves behind him,—to call his own name over and over, it is easy to see that his whole small figure is trembling with the ardour of his eager little soul.