THE DREAM OF THE YELLOW-THROAT
Many of us look with longing to the days of Columbus; we chafe at the thought of no more continents to discover; no unknown seas to encompass. But at our very doors is an “undiscovered bourne,” from which, while the traveller invariably returns, yet he will have penetrated but slightly into its mysteries. This unexplored region is night.
When the dusk settles down and the creatures of sunlight seek their rest, a new realm of life awakens into being. The flaring colours and loud bustle of the day fade and are lost, and in their place come soft, gray tones and silence. The scarlet tanager seeks some hidden perch and soon from the same tree slips a silent, ghostly owl; the ruby of the hummingbird dies out as the gaudy flowers of day close their petals, and the gray wraiths of sphinx moths appear and sip nectar from the spectral moonflowers.
With feet shod with silence, let us creep near a dense tangle of sweetbrier and woodbine late some summer evening and listen to the sounds of the night-folk. How few there are that our ears can analyse! We huddle close to the ground and shut our eyes. Then little by little we open them and set our senses of sight and hearing at keenest pitch. Even so, how handicapped are we compared to the wild creatures. A tiny voice becomes audible, then dies away,—entering for a moment the narrow range of our coarse hearing,—and finishing its message of invitation or challenge in vibrations too fine for our ears.
Were we crouched by a dense yew hedge, bordering an English country lane, a nightingale might delight us,—a melody of day, softened, adapted, to the night. If the air about us was heavy with the scent of orange blossoms of some covert in our own southland, the glorious harmony of a mockingbird might surge through the gloom,—assuaging the ear as do the blossoms another sense.
But sitting still in our own home tangle let us listen,—listen. Our eyes have slipped the scales of our listless civilised life and pierce the darkness with the acuteness of our primeval forefathers; our ears tingle and strain.
A slender tongue of sound arises from the bush before us. Again and again it comes, muffled but increasing in volume. A tiny ball of feathers is perched in the centre of the tangle, with beak hidden in the deep, soft plumage, but ever and anon the little body throbs and the song falls gently on the silence of the night: “I beseech you! I beseech you! I beseech you!” A Maryland yellow-throat is asleep and singing in its dreams.