We soon settle down to the bird-songs when once they have really all come back; and we plod on our preoccupied way, hearing them without hearing, unless, indeed, one day-note of a nightingale should electrify our heart. But there is no doubt that, at first returning, the silver minstrelsy of the woods is welcomed by most. And we never grow too old to feel a heart-kindling and a brightening of the eye, on that mild November day, when we start, and listen, and—yes, it is, the first Thrush-song breaking the meditative misty hush of the landscape. Autumn is stringing the woods with tears, and the first gripe of Winter has ere now pinched to death the more delicate garden flowers; but, even before his reign has begun in earnest, here is a voice which prophesies of his overthrow. Then the frosts come in defiance, and the last leaves spin down, and the snow-sheet falls, and the thrush is silent as though dead, and resistance seems overcome, and Winter’s reign established. An observant eye will, however, still detect a speckled clean breast, flitting into alternate concealment and sight behind the bushes in the shrubbery, and rustling the counterpane of dry leaves, under which those many little dull-green points are crowding out of the frost-held ground. But his song is kept in reserve for a time. And it seems that Spring is close at hand, and that the year is indeed turned, when next you hear him, high on the boughs of that tulip tree, large against the pale blue sky, singing out loud and clear from early morning to dusk of a bright February day. And the dry leaves have huddled away from the searching wind, and left the brown moist beds, over which trembles a surprise of delicate white cups, where the blunt dull-green points had been.
But I mean now to muse in a fanciful way about the characteristics of these returning songs, and the teaching that may be gathered from them. Canon Evans’ little book, “The Songs of the Birds,” might seem to have preoccupied this ground, but the treatment will differ, if the idea be the same.
To what, then, shall we liken the song of the Thrush? Different temperaments of men and women may well be illustrated by the variety in the character of the bird-songs. In the thrush’s song, then, I seem to hear the utterance of the strong and happy Christian. He has never been troubled with any doubts; the dark dismays and hidden misgivings of other minds are without meaning to him. Clear and glad, and untroubled, and strong in faith, the soul of this man sits upon wintry trees, above few trembling flowers, under a pale still sky, and sings from the early morning to the dusking eve an unwavering, undoubting, happy song. A song in which there are not weird mysterious depths of feeling, nor ecstatic, incomprehensible heights, but in which there is ever an even tenor, a stedfast sustained gladness, an unchecked unvarying trust. A song, perhaps, not of the highest intellect, but of the firmest faith. Here are no dark questionings, that must be content to pause for an answer hereafter; no evil suggestions, fiery darts which the shield of faith must ever be upheld to quench. There is almost a hard ignoring and turning away from minds otherwise fashioned; minds full of anxieties and searchings, that are troubles indeed, but not doubts; struggles, but not defeats, because faith upholds where sight fails. These sing more broken snatches of more passionate music, amid thicker branches, and in the dusk; while the thrush-spirit, unknowing of these fierce alternations, sings out, up there upon the naked bough, clear and distinct against the blue soft sky.
There is a wild stormy note which must detain us awhile from our March wood. It comes early in January, and on stormy days, under thin driving clouds, you may hear short bursts, as though the broken song of a husky blackbird, flung from the ivy-clad top of some tall, ancient spruce-fir. This is the note of the Missel-thrush, or Storm-cock. He seems rather to exult in the disturbed sky, and swaying boughs, and passing gleams and showers. There is a wild beauty, tempered with a little harshness, in the short sharp snatches of defiant and militant song. In him I find a type of the religious controversialist and disputant; the watchman set on his tower amid storms and lowering days. Such watchers there are, and they are useful to detect and descry the insidious approach of error. Controversialists-born, as it were, you shall ever hear their sharp short utterances under a stormy sky; and while you value the note, you will often detect and deplore some touch of harshness that grates upon the heart, some falling short of the mellow flute-like tones of Love.
But on our way to the wood, and as we pass through this meadow, a Skylark springs up, and flutters higher and higher; fountain-like, as it rises, scattering about its silver spray of song. Very soon the eye wanders about, searching after it for some time in vain, pleased at last to recover the dim black speck in the grey sky.
I suppose that the picture of which I spoke above gives the natural embodiment of the song of the lark.
“Heigh ho! daisies and buttercups,
Fair yellow daffodils, stately and tall;
A sunshiny world full of laughter and leisure,
And fresh hearts unconscious of sorrow and thrall.”
Up into the sky, bright thoughts and dreams, quivering wings, swelling throat, hurrying ecstasies and crowding notes of joy, impatient, yet impossible to be uttered. Careless flowers upon the lap,—withering, are they? But there is a worldful more to be had for the gathering. Oh yes, the lark’s song is that of the young heart—young enough to stop short at the attainment of simple gladness. There is not yet upon it the sweet hush even of love and sentiment, the upward soaring has no alternate dip and rise; the quick beat of the wings no pause; the bright flash of song no dyings-down into shade. Wonder at life goes hand in hand with joy in it; all is new and all is delicious; all is hope, and nothing is disappointing; the whole widening prospect is one of beauty and glad surprise. The year is in its early Spring, and has never so much as heard of Autumn yet; nor can guess, nor cares to try to divine, what those old brown leaves can mean, out of which huddle the thick primrose clumps. Higher and higher, and brighter and brighter, and gladder and gladder, and more and more impetuous the thronging notes, and more and more untiring the ecstatic wing. And God loves to see this, for He gave the feeling; and we may perceive that He has allotted to most things a young life of fresh colour and unmixed joyfulness. Kittens and lambs, and Spring leaves, and young children—they all sober down soon enough—and well they should. But let us not grudge the short hour of pure lightness of heart, that was God’s gift; nor hunt for ripe fruit among the sheets of blossom; nor dull with our heart’s twilight the first flush of the morning; nor desire, in the song of the lark, the thoughtfulness of the blackbird—far less the moan of the dove. Let not our work ever be to check, only to guide, and to tend, and to develop, the heart’s songful gladness, pointing it, indeed, heavenward; or, again, ready to tend the germ which some gust has stolen from its white petal-wings.
I spoke of the Blackbird. And here, as we near the wood, towards which for some long time we have been walking, we catch the smooth, rich, lyric fragments of this deep-hearted poet. Less openly, freely, fearlessly confident and exulting in an unclouded soul, than the thrush,—there is something exceedingly fascinating in the intermitted, but not broken song of the blackbird. The pauses which sever the stanzas of his song, seem well suited to its lyric character. There are in these separate and finished verses the polish and completeness, also the richness and liquid flow, of a set of stanzas of “In Memoriam,” and, moreover, something of their wild mournfulness and tender, deep, questioning thought. The blackbird’s song is that of the grave, mature mind, highly intellectual, somewhat touched with sadness, but more with love, and that has had to battle hard through life to keep both faith and love unimpaired.