The woods and groves, and the single forest trees that rise here and there from out the bounding hedge-rows, are now in full foliage; all, however, presenting a somewhat sombre, because monotonous, hue, wanting all the tender newness of the spring, and all the rich variety of the autumn. And this is the more observable, because the numerous plots of cultivated land, divided from each other by the hedge-rows, and looking, at this distance, like beds in a garden divided by box, are nearly all still invested with the same green mantle; for the wheat, the oats, the barley, and even the early rye, though now in full flower, have not yet become tinged with their harvest hues. They are all alike green; and the only change that can be seen in their appearance is that caused by the different lights into which each is thrown, as the wind passes over them. The patches of purple or of white clover that intervene here and there, and are now in flower, offer striking exceptions to the above, and at the same time load the air with their sweetness. Nothing ran be more rich and beautiful in its effect on a distant prospect at this season, than a great patch of purple clover lying apparently motionless on a sunny upland, encompassed by a whole sea of green corn, waving and shifting about it at every breath that blows.
The hitherto full concert of the singing birds is now beginning to falter, and fall short. We shall do well to make the most of it now; for in two or three weeks it will almost entirely cease till the autumn. I mean that it will cease as a full concert; for we shall have single songsters all through the summer at intervals; and those some of the sweetest and best. The best of all, indeed, the nightingale, we have now lost. So that the youths and maidens who now go in pairs to the wood-side, on warm nights, to listen for its song, (hoping they may not hear it,) are well content to hear each other’s voice instead.
We have still, however, some of the finest of the second class of songsters left; for the nightingale, like Catalani, is a class by itself. The mere chorus-singers of the grove are also beginning to be silent; so that the jubilate that has been chanting for the last month is now over. But the Stephenses, the Trees, the Patons, and the Poveys, are still with us, under the forms of the woodlark, the skylark, the blackcap, and the goldfinch. And the first-named of these, now that it no longer fears the rivalry of the unrivalled, not seldom, on warm nights, sings at intervals all night long, poised at one spot high up in the soft moonlit air.
We have still another pleasant little singer, the field cricket, whose clear shrill voice the warm weather has now matured to its full strength, and who must not be forgotten, though he has but one song to offer us all his life long, and that one consisting but of one note; for it is a note of joy, and will not be heard without engendering its like. You may hear him in wayside banks, where the sun falls hot, shrilling out his loud cry into the still air all day long, as he sits at the mouth of his cell; and if you chance to be passing by the same spot at midnight, you may hear it then too.[193]
Yet by him who holds this “Mirror,” we must not be “charmed” from our repose, but take the advice of a poet, the contemporary and friend of Cowper.
Let us not borrow from the hours of rest,
For we must steal from morning to repay.
And who would lose the animated smile
Of dawning day, for the austere frown of night?
I grant her well accoutred in her suit
Of dripping sable, powder’d thick with stars,
And much applaud her as she passes by
With a replenish’d horn on either brow!
But more I love to see awaking day
Rise with a fluster’d cheek; a careful maid,
Who fears she has outslept the custom’d hour,
And leaves her chamber blushing. Hence to rest;
I will not prattle longer to detain you
Under the dewy canopy of night.
Hurdis.