e dance of the
shadows. The ethereal haze lifted the heavy oaks and they were buoyant
on the mead, the rugged bark was chastened and no longer rough, each
slender flower beneath them again refined. There was a presence
everywhere, though unseen, on the open hills, and not shut out under the
dark pines. Dear were the June roses then because for another gathered.
Yet even dearer now with so many years as it were upon the petals; all
the days that have been before, all the heart-throbs, all our hopes lie
in this opened bud. Let not the eyes grow dim, look not back but
forward; the soul must uphold itself like the sun. Let us labour to make
the heart grow larger as we become older, as the spreading oak gives more
shelter. That we could but take to the soul some of the greatness and
the beauty of the summer!

Still the pageant moves. The song-talk of the finches rises and sinks
like the tinkle of a waterfall. The greenfinches have been by me all the
while. A bullfinch pipes now and then further up the hedge where the
brambles and thorns are thickest. Boldest of birds to look at, he is
always in hiding. The shrill tone of a goldfinch came just now from the
ash branches, but he has gone on. Every four or five minutes a chaffinch
sings close by, and another fills the interval near the gateway. There
are linnets somewhere, but I cannot from the old apple tree fix their
exact place. Thrushes have sung and ceased; they will begin again in ten
minutes. The blackbirds do not cease; the note uttered by a blackbird in
the oak yonder before it can drop is taken up by a second near the top of
the field, and ere it falls is caught by a third on the left-hand side.
From one of the topmost boughs of an elm there fell the song of a willow
warbler for a while; one of the least of birds, he often seeks the
highest branches of the highest tree.

A yellowhammer has just flown from a bare branch in the gateway, where he
has been perched and singing a full hour. Presently he will commence
again, and as the sun declines will sing him to the horizon, and then
again sing till nearly dusk. The yellowhammer is almost the longest of
all the singers; he sits and sits and has no inclination to move. In the
spring he sings, in the summer he sings, and he continues when the last
sheaves are being carried from the wheat field. The redstart yonder has
given forth a few notes, the whitethroat flings himself into the air at
short intervals