More than all, you see this truth exemplified in the songs of chaffinch and willow-wren, which are so much alike in form, yet so strangely different in the spirit. The hardy chaffinch began his bubbling, rollicking song with the first warm day in March, and it was more than half a fiction: to-day it has the same hard, set quality, like a petrified laugh in the woods. But the little willow-wren is the slave of no long habit of pretences. She has followed the sun from the south, keeping up with his youth; and now, from the glowing wood-top, she sends down her slender echo of chaffinch music, as if, though she would fain be silent, she must sing for very joy of the light. There is in it all the verve and gaiety of the chaffinch, yet infinitely softened and etherealised. And the long bowling phrase is never finished: it falls away and fails in the end, as if the singer suddenly realised her impotence to convey in melody one fraction of the morning’s loveliness and light.
Invisible through the dense tangle of the brier-bush, to me a voice and nothing more, the nightingale sat in her nook on the sunny side of the hedgerow, pouring out her song on the already song-burdened morning as a gilder lays gold upon gold. All its sweetness, its wild purity, its slow, sorrowful strength, and its sudden overtripping, overmastering joy, drifted out upon the sunshine of the meadow, the varied phrases coming turn and turn about with long intervening silences, as though the singer ruminated on all the beauty before her, and unconsciously sang her thoughts aloud. It was good to stand there in the cool shade, and listen, and take the facts of the thronging meadow life and colour beyond the hedgerow at such tuneful second-hand. But at length the nightingale put such a call, such an insistence into her music, as sent me to the meadow-gate a little way down the lane, just to see with my own eyes what manner of beauty could be to her so great an inspiration. Shading my eyes with my hands, I looked out over the mowing-grass, and thanked God it was June.
Knee-deep, almost, the grass stood under the morning sun; intensely green below, and above, white with the white of countless marguerites; and, higher still, rich rose-red with myriads of tremulous sorrel-plumes. A little way over the meadow, the green of the grass-blades was lost, and the eye saw only the white of the great moon-daisies, and the sorrel-red. Farther still, these two merged into one surface of formless pink, upon which the breath of the slow western air drew a rippling pattern like watered silk.
I passed through the gate, and waded into the grass to the farthest limit of the oak-shadow. All round the meadow these shadows lay upon the mowing-grass, blue and cool in the universal glare. It mattered nothing which way the sunshine fell. The green oak-boughs stretched out so far and so low that there was shadow beneath them everywhere. Just where I stood there was a patch of poor and stony soil. The tall-growing plants had shunned it, leaving it a little haven where the unconsidered trifles could see sunshine and flourish in their little might. Faced with the rich bewilderment of summer growth, a spot like this offers irresistible attraction. To look for long on great magnificence unwearied is a power not given to all. I know with what relief and pleasure, in other times, I have turned my back on snow-pinnacled mountains and soothed dazed eyes with a spot of grey-green lichen on a common stone. And now I turned from the boundless meadow radiance before me as from glory intolerable, and knelt to look awhile at the tiny, creviced beauties that lay among the clods.
There were scarlet pimpernel and lily-bind, gold-eyed cinquefoil and blue veronica—a score of nameless atoms starring the drab bare soil. Stooping lower, I noticed what I had never marked before—how the red of the pimpernel was centred with a crimson heart; crimson and scarlet—the military colours that I had always thought execrable, because unnaturally blended—here they were brought together, justified by the infallible artistry of the sun. The veronica seemed all pure cobalt blue as I stood gazing down upon it; but, looked at closely, each minute flower revealed a complication of colour. The blue of its petals was not a simple tint throughout, but was striped with a darker blue down in the cup. From its centre of sulphur-yellow three spires uprose, the one rich purple, the other two of a pale mauve. And, as if this were not enough beauty for so small a thing, the slender stalk upon which each blossom trembled was a shaft of delicate, translucent crimson, feathered over with white.
The cinquefoil was just as minutely wonderful in its way. Studded with little flat golden blossoms, its ferny growth mingled everywhere with the other rich-hued things, but it held itself aloof from them all. Even under the full noontide sun it preserved its chilly, star-like quality. Its pale silvery fronds seemed to quench the very sunbeams as they fell, and to make a cold spot on the earth in the midst of all the glowing soaring meadow-colour, like frost in fire. Many a time, in former years, I had looked at the cinquefoil thus, and marvelled at the ice-cold virtue of a thing that could so repel the fierce Tarquin of a summer sun. Nursing the fancy, I would grant it nothing at length but a senseless chastity done up in silver paper; as zealously guarded as little worth. But now I took the pains to pluck a few of its flowers, and discovered something new about it, something that raised its value to me a hundredfold. In all the meadow there was scarce another blossom with so sweet a scent; it was like the may, but at once more poignant and delicate. And, thinking of the may, I straightway forgot all about the cinquefoil, and turned to wander along the hedge.
The time had gone by when the hawthorn overran all the country-side with its billows of white blossom. These blinding masses of white—snow-white and cold as snow—are wonderful to look upon for a moment or two; but to me the hawthorn is always more lovely at the beginning, and, most of all, towards the end of its flowering life. At neither of these times is it really white. The new-opened blossom of the may is full of pink anthers that, in the aggregate, colour the whole bush. At this hour, for it is no more than an hour, the hawthorn-hedge is besieged by hordes of honey-sippers; hive-bees for the most part, but also every insect that can fly. Each flower keeps its rosy blush only so long as it remains unfertilised; and then colour and song forsake it together. The full-blown hedges of hawthorn have nothing for the ear, as they have little abiding solace to the eye.
But now again, as I roved along the narrow green way between the hedgerow and the tall grass of the meadow, the may, as of old, was beautiful to look upon. The pink anthers were dead, brown, shrivelled in their drained chalices; but the petals themselves, as they faded, had taken upon themselves a rich flush—the hectic of decay. Everywhere the hedgerow was wreathed and posied with this soft tint, the colour of old-rose. It was the colour of death, and that was often gay and bright enough, I knew. It seemed an ill thing wherein to delight on such a brave June morning. But the truth stuck fast in the mind, for all that: these festoons of dying may were nearly as beautiful as the best that youth and life could show.
Nearly—yet as I wandered on, creeping from bay to bay of green shadow, and edging round the great jutting promontories of hedgerow-growth, I came at once upon a sight and a sound that brought me to a more wondering halt than ever. It was my brier-bush again, and the nightingale was still singing, as I had heard her from the lane an hour ago. But now I no longer stood outside her concert-hall. I was here with her on the meadow side of her bower, and understood at last the full import of her singing. While on the shaded northern flank of the hedge there was nothing but greenery, here, on the sunny side, the brier-sprays were putting forth antlered buds, and one of them, close to my hand, had opened into the perfect flower. It was the first wild rose. If I had been Rip van Winkle, there and then waking from an age-long sleep, I should have known the day of the month, almost the very hour. Rarely, six days of June may pass in southern England, but never a seventh, without this master-sign of summer. Though storm and chill hold back the music of the migrant birds, they cannot daunt the English roses.