on, these songs have been ceaseless
since dawn; this evening, after the yellowhammer has sung the sun down,
when the moon rises and the faint stars appear, still the cuckoo will
call, and the grasshopper lark, the landrail's "crake, crake" will echo
from the mound, a warbler or a blackcap will utter his notes, and even at
the darkest of the summer night the swallows will hardly sleep in their
nests. As the morning sky grows blue, an hour before the sun, up will
rise the larks, singing and audible now, the cuckoo will recommence, and
the swallows will start again on their tireless journey. So that the
songs of the summer birds are as ceaseless as the sound of the waterfall
which plays day and night.

I cannot leave it; I must stay under the old tree in the midst of the
long grass, the luxury of the leaves, and the song in the very air. I
seem as if I could feel all the glowing life the sunshine gives and the
south wind calls to being. The endless grass, the endless leaves, the
immense strength of the oak expanding, the unalloyed joy of finch and
blackbird; from all of them I receive a little. Each gives me something
of the pure joy they gather for themselves. In the blackbird's melody
one note is mine; in the dance of the leaf shadows the formed maze is for
me, though the motion is theirs; the flowers with a thousand faces have
collected the kisses of the morning. Feeling with them, I receive some,
at least, of their fulness of life. Never could I have enough; never
stay long enough--whether here or whether lying on the shorter sward
under the sweeping and graceful birches, or on the thyme-scented hills.
Hour after hour, and still not enough. Or walking the footpath was never
long enough, or my strength sufficient to endure till the mind was weary.
The exceeding beauty of the earth, in her splendour of life, yields a new
thought with every petal. The hours when the mind is absorbed by beauty
are the only hours when we really live, so that the longer we can stay
among these things so much the more is snatched from inevitable Time. Let
the shadow advance upon the dial--I can watch it with equanimity while it
is there to be watched. It is only when the shadow is _not_ there, when
the clouds of winter cover it, that the dial is terrible. The invisible
shadow goes on and steals from us. But now, while I can see the shadow
of the tree and watch it slowly gliding along the surface of the grass,
it is mine. These a