Prose Idylls

udding leaves and the returning song-birds awakes no longer in us the astonishment which it awoke yearly among the dwellers in the old world, when the sun was a god who was sick to death each winter,

ily food and life, winter and spring were the two great facts of existence; the symbols, the one of death, the other of life; and the battle between the two-the battle of the sun with darkness, of winter with spring, of death with life, of bereavement with love-lay at the root of all their myths and all their creeds. Surely a change has come over our fancies. The seasons are little to us now. We are nearly as comfortable in winter as in summer, or in spring. Nay, we have begun, of late, to grumble at the two latter as much as at the former, and talk (and not without excuse at times) of 'the treacherous month of May,' and of 'summer having set in with its usual severity.' We work for the most pa

y. No more does Mrs. Pepys go to 'lie at Woolwich, in order to a little ayre and to gather May-dew' for her complexion, by Mrs. Turner's advice. The Maypole is gone likewise; and never more shall the puritan soul of a Stubbs be aroused in indignation at seeing 'against Maie, every parish, towne, and village assemble themselves together, both men, women, and children, olde and young, all indifferently, and goe into the woodes and groves, hilles and mountaines, where they spend the night in pastyme, and in the morning they returne, bringing with them birch bowes

at May-day scandals. But people may be made dull without being made good; and the direct and only effect of putting down May games and

en fared hardly, and slept cold; and were thankful to Almighty God for every beam of sunshine which roused them out of their long hybernation; thankful for

g man's fancy lightly tu

esides, met again, like Daphnis and Chloe, by shaugh and lea; and learnt t

eath their feet, hymned 'La Regine Avrillouse' to the music of some Minnesinger, whose song was as the song of birds; to whom the birds were friends, fellow-lovers, teachers, mi

to come. Some of the old German Minnelieder, on the other hand, seem actually copied from the songs of birds. 'Tanderadei' does not merely ask the nightingale to tell no tales; it repeats, in its cadences, the nightingale's song, as the old Minnesinger heard it when he nestled beneath the lime-tree with his love. They are often almost as inarticulate, these old singers, as the birds from whom t

annenwald pf

s und ein, wo wird

nnenwald pfe

le soul for the time being; and, like a bird, h

ve within the castle hall, till he breaks out in a strange, sad, tender melody-not without stat

n geht der

lau, Bl

w?lkchen füh

M?del im Saal,

ehst d

ehst d

lau, Bl

e Herzen sa

m Thal

f poetry; but they are like enough to the long, plaintive notes of the nightinga

r rather their chorus; from the birds they caught their melodies

ly English and Scotch songs and ballads, with their often m

ie, O B

r

lillelu and

nd the broom b

r

down belo

ers in th

s she her sw

leaves they

e refrains, which, if they were not meant to

hear the bird keynote. He who w

walking

corbies ma

ped itself into words in his mind: and he had listened to many a

when the sha

s be larg

merry in

the fowl

e sang, and w

upon t

t wakened

enwood whe

greenwood tree,' 'It was a lover and his lass,' 'When daffodils begin to peer,' 'Ye spotted snakes,' have all a ring in them which was

-cock so b

ange-ta

e with his

with litt

he sparrow,

-song cuc

est of the bi

y be, they are not song? Surely they have not, like the medi?val songsters, studied the speech of the birds, the prim?val teachers of melody; nor even melodies already extant, round which, as round a framework of pure music, their thoughts and images might crystallize themselves, certain thereby of becoming musical likewise. The best modern song writers, Burns and Moore, were inspired by their old national airs; and followed them, Moore at least, with a reverent fidelity,

s may go back, like the old Minnesingers, to the

at 'stormcock' loves to sing when rain and wind is coming on, and faces the elements as boldly as he faces hawk and crow-down to the delicate warble of the wren, who slips out of his hole in the brown bank, where he has huddled through the frost with wife and children, all folded in each other's arms like human beings, for the sake of warmth,-which, alas! does not always suffice; for many a lump of wrens may be found, frozen and shrivelled

s. Each has its own speech, inarticulate, expressing not thought but hereditary feeling; save a few birds who, like those little dumb darlings, the spotted flycatchers, seem to have absolutely nothing to say, and accord

kylark sings-as he alone can sing; and close by, from the hollies rings out the blackbird's tenor-rollicking, audacious, humorous, all but articulate. From the tree above him rises the treble of the thrush, pure as the song of angels: more pure, perhaps, in tone, though neither so varied nor so rich, as the song of the nightingale. And there, in the next holly, is the nightingale himself: now croaking like a frog; now talking aside to hi

at shun'st the

al, most m

ad, or a public path, as anyone will testify who recollects the 'Wrangler's Walk' from Cambridge to Trumpington forty years ago,

as not far wrong w

ering man, whose

mbrance of a

emper, or ne

tch, filled all t

ntle sounds tel

orrow)-he, a

se sounds a mel

oet echoes t

led Bulbul in the East. The true Philomel hardly enters Venetia, hardly crosses the Swiss Alps, ventures not into the Rhineland and Denmark, but penetrates (strangely enough) further into South Sweden than our own Luscinia: ranging meanwhile over all Central Europe, Persia, and the East, even to Egypt. Whether his song be really sad, let those who have heard him say. But as for our own Luscinia, who winters not in Egypt and Arabia, but in Morocco and Algeria, the

opmost he

clasps a s

black caps. And how intense and fruitful must have been the original vitality which, after so many generations, can still fill that little body with so strong a soul, and make him sing as Milton's new-created birds sang to Milton's Eve in Milton's Paradise. Sweet he is, and various, rich, and strong, beyond all English warblers, save the nightingale: but his speciality is his force, his rush, his overflow, not so much of love as of happiness.

cheerful? Most people are not aware, one sometimes fancies, how fine a singer is cock-robin now in the spring-time, when his song is drowned by, or at least confounded with, a dozen other songs. We know h

ere is nothin

ay, will agree, I think, that he is no mean musician; and that for force, variety

attend carefully to the expression. For the garden warbler, beginning in high and loud notes, runs down in cadence, lower and softer, till joy seems conquered by very weariness; while the willow wren, with a sudden outbreak of cheerfulness, though not quite sure

gain-is it

ere is nothin

ious cry, four or five times repeated, which would be a squeal, were it not so sweet. Suddenly he flits away, and flutters round the pendant tips of the beech-sprays like a great yellow butterfly, picking the insects

s mates flew against the lighthouses, and were killed by hundreds; and how he essayed the British Channel, and was blown back, shrivelled up by bitter blasts; and how he felt, nevertheless, that 'that wan water he must cross,' he knew not why: but something told him that his mother had done it before him, and he was flesh of her flesh, life of her life, and had inherited her 'instinct'-as we call hereditary memory, in order to avoid the trouble of finding out what it is, and how it comes. A duty was laid on him to go back to the place where he was bred; and he must do it: and now it is done; and he is weary, and sad, and lonely; and, for aught we know, thinking already that when the leaves begin to turn yellow, he must go back again, over the Channel, over the Landes, over the Pyrenees, to Morocco once more. Why should he n

em to the same causes to which we attribute them (from experience) in ourselves. 'But if so,' some will say, 'birds must have souls.' We must define what our own souls are, before we can define what kind of soul or no-soul a bird may or may not have. The truth is, that we want to set up some 'dignity of human nature;' some innate superiority to the animals, on which we may pride ourselves as our own possession, and not return thanks with fear and trembling for it, as the special gift of Almighty God. So we have given the poor animals over to the mechanic

ease. Let it claim for itself all that it can prove to be of the flesh, fleshly. That which is spiritual will stand out more clearly as of the Spirit. Let it thrust scalpel and microscope into the most sacred penetralia of brain and nerve. It will only find everywhere beneath brain and beneath nerve, tha

irst aff

dowy reco

they wha

untain light o

ster light of

rish, and have

rs seem momen

l silence; tr

rish

istlessness, no

an no

t is at enm

y abolish

*

rds, sing out wi

n powers and the burden of them we know full well. It does not lessen their dignity or their beauty in our eyes to hear that the birds of the air partake, even a little, of the same gifts of God as we. Of old said St. Guthlac in Crowland, as the swallows sat upon his knee, "He who leads his life according to the will of God, to him the wild deer and the wild birds draw more near;" and this new theory of yours may prove St. Guthlac right. St. Francis, too-he called the birds his brothers. Whether he was correct, either theologically or zoologically, he was plainly free from that fear of being mistaken for an ape, which haunts so many in these modern time

ore am

he meadows a

; and of all

earth; of all

-both what the

ive; well plea

the language

my purest thou

guardian of my

my mora